Study the picture given. Write a story or a description or an account of what it suggests to you. Your composition may be about the subject of the picture, or you may take suggestions from it; however, there must be a clear connection between the picture and your composition.

MODEL APPROACH (the composition itself depends on the picture printed in your paper)

Whatever the picture shows, the composition must satisfy three requirements, and a model answer should demonstrate all three:

1. IT MUST ESTABLISH THE CONNECTION EARLY. Within the first paragraph the reader should be able to tell which picture you were given. If the photograph shows a flooded street, the water should be on the page in the opening lines — not arrived at in the final sentence.

1. IT MUST BE A COMPLETE COMPOSITION. The question allows a story, a description, or an account, and you should decide which at the outset and write that form properly. A story needs a situation, a complication and a resolution; a description needs sensory detail and an organising order; an account needs a clear sequence of events and a reflection.

1. IT MAY GO BEYOND THE PICTURE. The question expressly permits you to "take suggestions from it". A photograph of an old man on a bench may become a story about the letter in his pocket. What it may NOT become is a composition with no traceable link to the image at all.

A safe opening formula, if the picture puzzles you: describe the image in two or three sentences of concrete detail, then move into your narrative from one element within it.

WHY THIS OPTION IS BOTH THE EASIEST AND THE RISKIEST

It is the easiest because you may write in any form you choose — narrative, descriptive or reflective — so you can play to your strength.

It is the riskiest because of one sentence in the question: "there must be a CLEAR CONNECTION between the picture and your composition." Every year candidates write a rehearsed story with a token reference to the image bolted on, and every year they lose content marks for it. The connection must be structural, not decorative.

Practical test before you begin: in one sentence, state how your composition arises from the picture. If you cannot, choose another option.

Declare your form in the first line by how you write, not by announcing it. Do not write "I shall now describe the picture".

FORMAT AND MARKS DIVISION: see "Composition — grade bands and marking" in the Writing Formats & Marking (Reference) chapter, along with the worked model for this composition type.

USE THIS AS A MODEL, NOT AS AN ANSWER TO MEMORISE. The question asks for an ORIGINAL composition, and every year examiners identify scripts reproduced from guide books; a memorised answer can be penalised for plagiarism and will in any case read as borrowed. Study this piece for its STRUCTURE — how it opens, how the paragraphs are ordered, where the required tasks are answered, how it ends — and then write your own, about your own school, your own family, your own town. Your own specific detail is worth more marks than anyone else’s polished sentence.