The essays have been marked using five criteria: spelling and punctuation, accuracy of grammar, variety and use of English, fluency and how well the topic was answered. Each area has been awarded a mark out of five. These have then been added together and the total has been multiplied by four to produce an overall percentage. All of the essays are good but the writers show strengths and weaknesses in different areas.

Spelling and punctuation
All five articles scored highly on spelling and punctuation with articles A, B and E obtaining a full five points. Essays C and D lost 0.5 of a point because they had a few minor spelling errors or too many commas.

Accuracy of grammar
Scores for grammar are also high. For this area Essay B scored the highest points (5) with an almost grammatically perfect composition including conditionals, modal verbs and prepositions. Essay D scored the lowest points here because the article has some quite basic grammar mistakes related to tenses, prepositions or omitting “the”.

Variety and use of vocabulary
There is some very interesting vocabulary and a lot of great expressions in the five essays. Essays A and B scored most highly in this area (4) because they made fewer mistakes. Essays C, D and E all used some words incorrectly (for example, enormous visitors instead of many, expect instead of expectation and volunteer instead of volunteering). Sometimes writers have used the wrong form of a word (a verb instead of a noun) and at other times there are words that exist but are no longer in common use (merriment).

Fluency (coherence and cohesion)
The top scorer is Essay C (4). This is primarily because it is the only one of the five essays with sub-headings. These help the reader navigate through the text and give the whole article a better sense of structure. Essays A and B attained the lowest scores (3) because it is not clear where paragraphs begin and end and there are fewer linking devices used.

How well the topic was answered.
Again the top scorer in this area is Essay C (4.5). Essay C is the only essay out of the five that answers the topic completely and includes a greeting to London 2012. This demonstrates that the writer was aware of everything that had to be included and made sure that nothing was overlooked.

Essay C scored the highest percentage and comes out in first place because it gained extra points for “fluency “and “how well the topic was covered”. This shows the importance of planning, using sub-headings and of reading the topic question carefully and making a note of everything that has to be included. Other essays scored more highly than Essay C in every other marking criteria. However, the final percentage shows that doing well in these areas is insufficient if fluency and answering the topic are neglected.