When the instructions are unclear
Text: an original contemporary advice-column-style practice extract.
I once spent an entire evening arranging a display for a club because I thought the instructions meant that every item had to be the same height. They did not say that. I had read the page twice, decided I ought to understand it, and carried on guessing. The display looked orderly, but it was not what the organiser had asked for.
If a set of instructions leaves you uncertain, mark the sentence that is causing the trouble and ask a specific question about it. You could check with the person who wrote them, or with someone who has already completed the task. That will not always produce an immediate answer, and different people may interpret a vague sentence in different ways. Even so, asking is more useful than quietly building a whole plan around a guess.
I still read instructions carefully before I ask anyone else to explain them. I am not suggesting that every difficult sentence needs a meeting. But admitting that one part is unclear is not the same as admitting you cannot do the task. It is a small interruption that may save you from confidently finishing the wrong job.
In this extract, the writer tries to persuade readers to seek clarification when instructions are unclear without making them feel incapable.
Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.
834 exam-style questions on Edexcel GCSE English Language 2.3 Content: non-fiction study and transactional text types, covering 2.3.9 Write an article, 2.3.10 Write a letter, 2.3.11 Write a review, 2.3.12 Write a text for a speech, and 2.3.13 Write a section for a guide, textbook, leaflet or booklet. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.