I was scrolling through travel photography hashtags the other day (procrastination in its finest form), and I kept seeing the same words: breathtaking, stunning, majestic, awe-inspiring.

All of them vague, all of them reaching for something they can’t quite touch. We have dozens of precise words for furniture, for car parts, for types of pasta—but when we encounter something genuinely overwhelming, something that makes us feel our own insignificance, we fall back on the same tired adjectives. It’s as if the language itself flinches away from the experience.

We say a landscape is “beautiful” when what we really mean is “it frightened me” or “I felt suddenly aware that I will die and the mountain will not notice.” But we don’t have compact, everyday words for that feeling—so we smooth it into “breathtaking” and move on, the truth lost somewhere between the experience and the telling.

This week’s essay prompt: “Write a description of a dramatic landscape”—Question 2 from the March 2025 Paper 2 series.Here’s what makes this prompt quietly devastating: it sounds straightforward. Students will default to postcard descriptions—sunsets, mountains bathed in golden light, peaceful valleys. But the word “dramatic” is doing serious work here. Drama isn’t pretty. Drama is conflict, tension, threat. The strongest responses understand that a dramatic landscape isn’t one that makes you want to take a photo—it’s one that makes you feel something uncomfortable. Fear, insignificance, awe that borders on dread.

The trap is thinking description is about adjectives. It’s not. Description is about making the reader experience the physical reality of a place—the wind, the scale, the sound, the way your body reacts. Can you make someone feel the vertigo of a cliff edge through syntax? Can you show the indifference of nature without saying “the mountain was indifferent”? This tests whether you understand that good descriptive writing isn’t decoration—it’s architecture. Every detail should contribute to a cumulative emotional effect.

Most students will write what they think a dramatic landscape looks like. The sophisticated ones will write what it feels like to be there—the physicality, the threat, the way a landscape can make you aware of your own fragility without caring that you’re aware of it.

Write a description of a dramatic landscape.

The full essay is available for our premium members and is also marked and graded according to the IGCSE First Language English official rubrics and marking criteria. By reading it, you can see exactly how a top-band descriptive piece constructs scale, menace, and emotional resonance without ever using the word “beautiful.”

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Welcome back, friends!

Last week I wrote about how English turns emotional intimacy into a transaction—how we “make” and “build” friendships as if they were products. This week, as we reach the final essay from the May 2025 Paper 2 series, I’ve been thinking about how English handles the opposite end of the spectrum: how we talk about endings. We have this odd linguistic habit of softening finality with vague qualifiers. We say “one of the last times” or “probably the last” as if hedging our bets against the universe. We say “see you later” when we mean “goodbye forever” because “later” feels less permanent, less like a door closing. But here’s the strange thing: when we do use the word “last” without qualification—”the last time,” “the last one”—it gains this terrible weight. It stops being temporal and becomes almost ceremonial. English reserves unqualified finality for moments that demand acknowledgment: last words, last rites, last chances. The word becomes a spotlight, forcing us to recognize what we’re usually too comfortable ignoring: that everything ends, and the ending matters precisely because we know it’s happening.

This week’s essay prompt: “Write a story with the title, ‘The last one’.“; it’s question 5 from Variant 3 of the May 2025 Paper 2 series—and yes, this is the last one from May 2025!

Here’s what makes this title both generous and demanding: it gives you total freedom (the last what? the last when? the last to whom?) while simultaneously locking you into a structure. Everything in your story must orbit that word “last,” must justify why this particular moment, object, or person deserves that designation. Most students will interpret “last” as simple chronology—the final item in a sequence, the end of a list. But the strongest narratives understand that “last” isn’t just temporal; it’s moral and emotional. Something becomes “the last one” not just because it comes after everything else, but because it carries the accumulated weight of everything that came before. Can you write a story where “the last dose of medicine” also means “the last mercy we can offer”? Where “the last person remaining” also interrogates what it costs to be the one left behind? The title tests whether you understand that finality transforms meaning—the last conversation is different from all previous conversations precisely because both people know there won’t be another. This is narrative as archaeology: you’re not just telling what happens at the end; you’re revealing why the end redefines everything that led to it. The challenge is making us feel the weight of “last” without announcing it, showing us through character, consequence, and choice why this moment couldn’t be any other position in the sequence.

You’ll find the essay here!

Write a story with the title, ‘The last one’.

The full essay is available for our premium members. If you haven’t signed up already, then make sure to sign up over here!

More coming soon! See you guys in the next one!

Welcome back, friends!

Last week I wrote about how English softens the language around labor—how we use euphemisms to look away from difficult work.

This week, I’ve been thinking about the opposite linguistic phenomenon: how English makes emotional intimacy sound transactional.

We “make” friends the way we “make” dinner or “make” a mess.

We “build” relationships like we’re constructing furniture.

We talk about “investing” in friendships, about emotional “labor,” about people being “worth” our time. It’s as if we’ve imported the vocabulary of commerce and manufacturing into the realm of human connection, turning something organic and unpredictable into a project with measurable inputs and outputs.

But here’s what’s strange: we don’t have many words for the actual moment a friendship begins. We say “we met,” but that’s just proximity. We say “we clicked,” but that’s vague, almost mystical. English gives us precise language for the end of friendships (falling out, drifting apart, cutting ties) but not for the tentative, accidental beginning—that moment when two strangers decide, without quite deciding, to let each other matter.

This week’s essay prompt: “Write a story which involves making a new friendship.”; it’s question 4 from Variant 3 of the May 2025 Paper 2 series, and next week, we’ll come to the end of May 2025 (yay!)

Here’s what makes this prompt quietly treacherous: it sounds sweet, wholesome, safe.

Students will default to heartwarming meet-cutes or bonding-over-shared-hobbies scenes. But the strongest responses understand that real friendships rarely begin in moments of joy—they begin in moments of vulnerability, crisis, or accidental revelation.

The prompt says “involves” making a friendship, not “is about” it, which means the friendship doesn’t have to be the plot; it can be the consequence of the plot.

Can you write a story where two people become friends not because they like the same things, but because they recognize the same fear in each other? Can you show friendship forming in the cracks between words, in what’s not said but understood?

This tests whether you understand that narrative isn’t just about what happens—it’s about what changes. A new friendship is a transformation: two people who were separate become permeable to each other. The challenge is making that shift feel earned rather than convenient, showing the exact moment when strangers stop performing politeness and start risking honesty. Most students will write meeting scenes. The sophisticated ones will write recognition scenes—where characters see something true in each other and decide, despite every instinct for self-protection, to be seen back.

You’ll find the essay here!

Write a story which involves making a new friendship.

The full essay is available for our premium members and is also marked and graded according to the IGCSE First Language English official rubrics and marking criteria. By reading it, you can get a clear picture of what works, as always. If you haven’t signed up already, then make sure to sign up over here!

Thank you all, and look forward to seeing you in the next one!