Test 16 (a) — The Article

An article names its audience — a local newspaper, a national newspaper, a school magazine — and hands you three or four bullets. Write to that audience. A school magazine article may speak to "we students"; a national newspaper article may not.

Before you read any model below: copying prompt points verbatim awards 0 for Content, and the Zero-Content Gate then withholds every Language, Organisation and Mechanics mark. Copying zeros all 15. Read for the moves, then write your own.

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1. The Role of Advertising in Media

Past paper — 2023, option (a). Audience: a local newspaper, giving your opinion.

Include the following: what advertising is · why it is necessary · how it influences the public · its adverse effects on society

Model answer (200 words)

Advertising is the paid promotion of goods, services and ideas through newspapers, television, radio and, increasingly, social media. Few of us pass a single day without meeting it.

It is necessary for reasons we rarely notice. Advertising funds the newspapers and channels we rely on, which would otherwise be unaffordable. It tells a farmer in Anuradhapura that a new seed variety exists, and it allows a small business in Galle to reach customers it could never visit. Without it, commerce would move far more slowly.

Its influence on the public, however, is considerable. A well-made advertisement does not merely inform; it persuades. Children ask for a particular biscuit because a cartoon recommended it, and adults judge a soap powder by the confidence of the voice selling it rather than by evidence.

That persuasive power carries adverse effects. Advertisements create wants that families cannot afford, encouraging debt and dissatisfaction. Some promote food of poor nutritional value to schoolchildren, and a few make claims that would not withstand scrutiny.

Advertising, then, is neither villain nor servant. It is a powerful tool, and like any tool it requires regulation and an alert public. We should enjoy it — and believe rather less of it.

What to steal

• The definition opening. Sentence one answers "what advertising is" — the first bullet — before anything else. No warm-up.
• One bullet per paragraph, in the order the paper lists them. The examiner can tick them off.
• Local, concrete examples (Anuradhapura, Galle) instead of abstractions. Concrete detail is what "with depth and relevant examples" means.
• The balanced close — neither condemning nor defending, then a short memorable final clause.

What NOT to steal

• The examples. Use your own district, your own product.
• "Neither villain nor servant" — that phrasing is spent once you have read it.

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2. Educational Programmes on Television

Past paper — 2024, option (a). Audience: a national newspaper.

Include the following: what an educational programme is · types of programmes · benefits to students and the public

Model answer (195 words)

An educational programme is a broadcast made to teach rather than merely to entertain. It sets out to leave the viewer knowing something they did not know before.

Such programmes take several forms. Some are curriculum lessons delivered by experienced teachers, which proved indispensable when schools closed during the pandemic. Others are documentaries on wildlife, history or science. A third kind is the practical programme — farming methods, health advice, spoken English — aimed at adults who left school long ago.

The benefits to students are substantial. A child in a remote village can hear the same explanation as a child in Colombo, which narrows a gap that has existed for generations. Difficult topics become clearer when they are shown rather than described, and a broadcast can be watched again until it is understood.

The wider public gains too. A farmer learns to conserve water; a mother learns to recognise the early signs of dengue. Knowledge that once reached only those who could attend a class now reaches an entire island at once.

Television is often blamed for wasting young people's time. Used deliberately, it remains one of the cheapest and most effective teachers this country has.

What to steal

• Contrast in the definition ("to teach rather than merely to entertain") — it defines by exclusion, which is sharper than a list.
• Three types = three sentences. The bullet asked for types, so the structure is visibly a list without being written as one.
• Two audiences, two paragraphs — the bullet says "students and public", so both get their own space.
• The reversal close. It names the common objection ("blamed for wasting time") and answers it in the last line.

What NOT to steal

• The dengue and water examples — they recur in thousands of scripts. Find your own.

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3. How traffic congestion creates problems for people

Past paper — 2025, option (a). Audience: your school magazine.

Include the following: problems created by traffic jams · steps to solve the problem · how the public can support the solution

Model answer (213 words)

Anyone who has waited forty minutes to travel four kilometres knows that our roads are no longer able to carry what we ask of them.

The problems reach further than lost time. Idling vehicles release fumes that worsen asthma among the youngest passengers. Ambulances are delayed at exactly the moment delay is least affordable. Students arrive at school tired before the first lesson, and parents arrive at work already exhausted. Fuel burned while standing still is money burned for nothing.

Several steps would ease it. Public transport must become frequent and comfortable enough that a car owner will genuinely choose it. Roads near schools need staggered opening times so that every vehicle in a town does not move in the same ten minutes. Better traffic management at junctions, and enforcement that is consistent rather than occasional, would help immediately.

None of this works without us. The public can support it by sharing vehicles for the school run, by cycling or walking short distances, and by obeying lane discipline instead of creating a fourth lane where three exist. Reporting a broken signal is a small act with a large effect.

Congestion is not a problem the government can solve alone. It is a habit, and habits are changed by the people who hold them.

What to steal

• The lived opening. A specific number (forty minutes, four kilometres) puts the reader inside the problem in one sentence.
• Problems that are not only "time" — health, emergencies, fuel, fatigue. Depth means finding the second-order effects.
• The pivot to the reader ("None of this works without us") — the third bullet asked about the public, and this sentence hands it over.
• A close that reframes: from infrastructure to habit.

What NOT to steal

• The forty-minutes figure. Use one from your own journey.

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4. The plastic that never leaves our town

Unseen practice prompt. Audience: your school magazine.

Include the following: where plastic waste comes from · why it is difficult to remove · what the school can do · what each student can do

Model answer (201 words)

Walk along any canal in our town after a heavy rain and you will see the same sight: bottles, wrappers and bags caught in the weeds, waiting for the next flood to carry them somewhere else.

Most of this waste arrives from ordinary places — lunch packets, shopping bags, water bottles bought for a single journey. Very little of it is dropped deliberately. It simply escapes, a piece at a time.

It is difficult to remove because plastic does not decompose; it merely breaks into smaller fragments that are harder to collect and easier for animals to swallow. Burning it releases toxic smoke, and burying it moves the problem underground rather than ending it.

Our school could act without waiting for anyone. A ban on single-use bottles at the canteen, a refill station at the main corridor, and separate bins that are genuinely emptied separately would remove a great deal at its source.

Each student can do more than they think. Carry a steel bottle. Refuse the bag for a single item. Pick up one piece of waste a day on the way home — thirty students doing so removes nine hundred pieces a month.

Small habits, multiplied by a school, become infrastructure.

What to steal

• The observed opening — a place the reader recognises, described in one image.
• "Very little of it is dropped deliberately" — refusing the easy villain makes the argument more honest and more persuasive.
• Arithmetic as persuasion (thirty students × thirty days). Numbers make an abstract appeal concrete.

What NOT to steal

• The canal image. Look out of your own window.

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5. Why our school needs a working library

Unseen practice prompt. Audience: a local newspaper.

Include the following: the present condition · what a library gives a student · what is needed · how the community can help

Model answer (201 words)

Our school has a library. It has shelves, a roof and a lock. What it does not have, most afternoons, is a single student inside it.

The condition explains the emptiness. Many of the books are older than the teachers. There is no catalogue, so finding anything requires patience few students have after a full day. It opens during class hours and closes when we are free.

That is a loss, because a library gives a student what no classroom can. It gives access to more than one explanation of a difficult idea. It builds the reading speed that the comprehension paper quietly depends upon. Above all it gives a quiet place to a child whose home has none.

What is needed is modest: a current catalogue, a regular budget for new titles, opening hours that extend past the last bell, and one member of staff with time set aside for it.

The community can supply much of this. Retired teachers can staff an afternoon. Families can donate books their children have outgrown. A local business could fund a shelf and be thanked on it.

A library is not a room with books. It is a room with readers in it.

What to steal

• The withheld twist. Three plain facts, then the one that matters. It earns attention without exaggeration.
• "what no classroom can" — arguing from what is unique to the thing, rather than listing generic benefits.
• Asking for something modest and specific. A named, affordable request is more persuasive than a grand one.

What NOT to steal

• The closing line. It is a good shape — X is not A, it is B — but find your own pair.

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6. Mobile phones and the sleep we are losing

Unseen practice prompt. Audience: your school magazine.

Include the following: how phones affect sleep · why sleep matters for students · the difficulty of stopping · practical steps

Model answer (207 words)

Ask any Grade 11 class how many went to sleep after midnight and watch the hands go up. Ask why, and the answer is almost always the same rectangle of light.

Phones affect sleep in two ways. The screen itself delays the body's natural signal to rest, so we are not tired when we should be. More powerful is the design: there is always one more message, one more video, and no natural stopping point.

Sleep matters more than students are told. It is when the day's learning is consolidated into memory — revision done before a bad night is largely wasted. It governs concentration, mood and even how often we fall ill. A persistent lack of it has the same effect on attention as real illness.

Stopping is genuinely difficult, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. The phone holds our friendships, our class group and our alarm clock. "Just use it less" is advice that has never worked.

What works is removing the decision. Charge the phone in another room. Set the alarm on a clock instead. Agree with your class group that messages after ten o'clock go unanswered — a rule is easier to keep together than alone.

Protect the sleep, and the studying gets easier on its own.

What to steal

• Opening with a question the reader can answer for themselves. It makes the problem theirs before you describe it.
• Conceding the difficulty ("pretending otherwise helps nobody"). An argument that admits the hard part is trusted more.
• Removing the decision — advice that changes the environment rather than demanding willpower.

What NOT to steal

• "That rectangle of light." Striking once, tired twice.

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7. The water we are quietly wasting

Unseen practice prompt. Audience: a national newspaper.

Include the following: where our water comes from · how it is being lost · consequences for farming and health · what must be done

Model answer (212 words)

Sri Lanka is not a dry country. We receive generous rain, store it in tanks built a thousand years ago, and still find taps running empty by August in several districts.

Our water arrives as monsoon rain, is held in reservoirs and ancient tanks, and travels through canals to fields and towns. The system is remarkable, and it is leaking.

The losses are mostly invisible. Distribution pipes lose a substantial share before the water reaches any tap. Tanks silt up because the catchment above them has been cleared of trees. Wells are drawn faster than rain can refill them, and near the coast the space left behind fills with salt.

The consequences arrive first in the fields. A farmer who cannot irrigate in time loses a season, not a day. Where supply is short, families store water in open containers, and open containers breed the mosquitoes that carry dengue — a water problem becomes a health problem.

What must be done is unglamorous. Repair the pipes we have before building new ones. Conserve the catchment forests that keep the tanks alive. Meter and price water so that waste has a cost. Harvest rain at every new building.

Water is not scarce here. It is mismanaged, and that is a far more hopeful problem.

What to steal

• Refusing the expected frame ("not a dry country") — it earns the reader's attention immediately.
• Following a chain: catchment → tank → pipe → tap → field → health. Depth often means showing the chain rather than listing items.
• A close that reframes the problem as solvable. Hope is more persuasive than alarm, and it is also true here.

What NOT to steal

• The August detail — check your own district before borrowing a fact.

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8. Why a second language is worth the effort

Unseen practice prompt. Audience: your school magazine.

Include the following: why students avoid it · what it opens up · how to begin · a realistic expectation

Model answer (194 words)

Most students do not dislike learning a second language. They dislike the feeling of being a beginner in public, which is a different thing entirely.

That fear is why so many give up. We are asked to speak before we are ready, are corrected in front of thirty classmates, and conclude that we have no aptitude for it. Almost nobody lacks the aptitude. What we lack is a place to be bad at it safely.

The reward is considerable. A second language opens a vocational door — tourism, technology, nursing, and almost every post that involves a customer. It opens a second internet. And it makes a third language markedly easier, because the hardest one to learn is always the first.

Beginning is simpler than it looks. Ten minutes a day defeats two hours a week. Read something you already enjoy in the new language, so the subject carries the effort. Speak to one patient friend rather than a room.

Expect to be slow. Expect months, not weeks, and expect the mistakes to continue long after you are useful. Fluency is not the absence of errors; it is the willingness to keep going despite them.

What to steal

• Correcting a false premise. Opening by disagreeing with the obvious explanation makes the essay feel like thinking rather than reciting.
• "Ten minutes a day defeats two hours a week" — the shape of a memorable contrast, not the words.
• Honest expectation-setting in the closing paragraph. Advice that promises less is believed more.

What NOT to steal

• The final sentence. Write your own definition of fluency.

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9. The road outside our school gate

Unseen practice prompt. Audience: a local newspaper.

Include the following: the danger at present · who is at risk · what the authorities should do · what parents and students can do

Model answer (204 words)

At ten minutes to eight every morning, four hundred children cross a road on which vehicles travel at fifty kilometres an hour. Nothing separates the two facts but good luck, and good luck is not a road safety policy.

The danger is specific. There is no crossing within two hundred metres of the gate. Parked vans block the view of any child stepping out between them. The single warning sign faces the wrong direction and is half hidden by a branch.

Those most at risk are the youngest, who are shortest and hardest to see, and students cycling from the far side of town, who must cross two lanes of moving traffic to reach the gate.

The authorities could act cheaply. A marked crossing with a warden at opening and closing time would remove most of the risk. Speed bumps two hundred metres either side would do the rest. A clear no-parking zone at the gate would restore the sightline.

Parents and students need not wait. Parents can set down children on the school side rather than calling them across. Students can cross in groups, at the same point, wearing something visible in the rain.

A crossing costs very little. A child costs everything.

What to steal

• A timestamped opening. "At ten minutes to eight" is more vivid than "every morning".
• Naming the risk precisely — no crossing, blocked sightline, wrong-facing sign. Specific problems invite specific fixes.
• Cheap, nameable remedies. "Cheaply" makes the request hard to refuse.

What NOT to steal

• The final two sentences. The rhetorical shape is strong but it is now used.

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10. Using social media without being used by it

Unseen practice prompt. Audience: a national newspaper.

Include the following: what young people gain from it · the risks · why "just stop" fails · practical habits

Model answer (214 words)

Every generation is warned about a new medium, and every warning sounds the same. Social media deserves something better than either panic or defence.

Young people gain real things from it. A student in a small town can follow a university lecture, find a study group, or sell a craft to a customer three provinces away. For those who feel alone in their own school, it is sometimes the first place they are understood.

The risks are equally real. Attention is the product being sold, so the design rewards whatever holds it — including anger and comparison. Misinformation travels faster than correction. And a photograph posted at sixteen does not disappear at twenty-five.

Telling young people to stop has never worked and is not going to. It is where the class notices are, where friendships are maintained, and where a great deal of ordinary life now happens. Advice that ignores this is simply not taken.

Better habits are attainable. Decide what you opened the application for before you open it. Follow accounts that teach you something and mute those that only make you feel behind. Check any claim that makes you angry before sharing it. Keep one part of the day without a screen in it.

Use the tool deliberately, and it stays a tool.

What to steal

• Refusing both extremes in the opening. It positions the essay as balanced before the argument begins.
• "Attention is the product being sold" — one sentence of mechanism explains the risk better than a list of harms.
• Taking the objection seriously ("has never worked and is not going to") before offering advice.

What NOT to steal

• The opening sentence about generations — it is a common move; make yours specific to Sri Lanka.