The paid advertisement below the advice
Original opinion extract, written for practice.
I do not mind a writer being paid to recommend a bag. I mind discovering the payment after I have finished admiring the writer’s spontaneous enthusiasm for its pockets. A small label at the bottom may satisfy somebody’s checklist while leaving the reader to reconstruct the whole relationship afterwards. Tell me at the beginning. Then I can enjoy the description, examine the claims and decide how much weight to give the praise. Payment does not prove a recommendation false, any more than an unpaid opinion proves itself sensible. It changes what I need to know about why this particular bag has appeared in front of me. Honesty here is not the absence of money. It is the absence of a little surprise waiting underneath the final photograph.
Use your own words to evaluate the writer’s attitude to disclosing sponsorship of recommendations. Give details from the extract to justify your answer.
100 exam-style questions on CIE IGCSE English Language 5.2 Section A Directed Writing (40 marks), covering 5.2.1 Question structure and stimulus texts, 5.2.2 Question 1(a) analysis and evaluation of the text(s), and 5.2.3 Question 1(b) directed writing task. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.