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Some good Year 10 writing

Here are some examples of work by Y10 students written under exam conditions. They offer examples of impressive answers and perceptive comments

Charlie Sullivan
The media always stereotype people so we can never be sure if the media are giving us propaganda or the truth. A disabled person is never in an advert for something that is supposed to make you look wonderful. There is no real reason why people with a disability should be excluded from the world of the media.

May Roberts
In different places, cultures are different. Some differences between places are very small but others may be very big. This is what we call cultural relativity. What is right and wrong varies from place to place. In the Gikuyu tribe of Kenya, men are allowed as many wives as they want or can support. Married couples are supposed to keep on reproducing until they have at least two children of each sex. These children are meant to be keeping the souls of their grandparents and so they must keep their ancestor’s name. The slightly older children bring up the babies, but the oldest children work on the land.

In Britain it is very different because a man can only be married to one woman at a time. The couple can have as many or as little children as they want and can call them whatever name they choose. Children in Great Britain are sent to school at the age of 4 or 5 and are free to leave when they have turned 16 and sat their final examinations.

This was a good answer because it explored the differences between two cultures to see how what each thought was normal was in fact very different from what the other thought was correct.

Melanie Downton
I think that men and women are becoming a lot more equal in modern Britain. Although most of the MPs are still men, we have to give our thanks to some of them for giving rights to women. Women have more control now, especially if they do not want children. Contraceptives have ensured that.

This was the opening passage in an answer that was otherwise a bit underdeveloped. This though has everything for a perfect piece of sociology – ideas about changes in society, facts to back up the opinions and some sensible points about why change has taken place.

Sarah Jane Lewis
Cultural relativity is when people find it difficult to understand what is right and wrong and the truth and untruth. This is because we all come from different cultures. What is right for one culture is different from another culture. For example, the Gikuyu expects married couple to keep having children until they have two of each sex. In Britain, our culture suggest that we can have as many children as we like and if we don’t want any then we do not have to have children.

A perfect clear answer here!

Single parents in Britain face a lot of money troubles due to the fact that only one parent is there bringing in the money. They face the struggle of having to explain to their children that they cannot have the latest Nike trainers. By doing this they feel guilty. They have to cope with the emotional pain as well as their children on their own.

They also have to cope with all of the discrimination that they get. Single parents are stereotyped as lazy. This is not the case. They actually find that they get more money on benefits than actually working so they choose the best option, which is to stay at home.

Their child may have got on better with the other parent and always talked to them. The parent now has to try and get the child to tell of their problems. Also a single mother might find it hard to talk to her son about boy’s problems and a single father to talk about girls’ problems to his daughter.

Here she has it – money, discrimination and emotional difficulties. A nice neat and well-explained set of points. If she had actually pointed out the difficulties with a little sub-heading it would have been even better.

Debbie Lewis
In our society, boys are expected to act like boys. They are taught this in a number of ways, some of these are:

Imitation. Children try to copy their parents and try to be like them. So if the father of the house does not help with housework, then the boys will grow up believing that this is how the world works for men.

Role models – when children are young, they like to watch their heroes on television. In a young boy is always seeing men as the tough and strong ones, the he will believe that this is true in life.

Group pressure – If a boy is seen playing with girls’ toys then he will be teased by other boys. This is more likely to happen to boys than to girls.

This shows understanding and knowledge of sociological terms. It cannot be faulted. I would have liked an example to go with ‘group pressure’ though.

Aimee Newton
I do not agree with the statement that the nuclear family is the normal family in Britain today. However, I do feel that it is the most common. I cannot see how there is a normal family construction in Britain.

I suspect that the nuclear family is becoming less common because there seems to be more single parent and never married families around.

Also many people seem to be choosing the type of family life that they want because they have more choice than they did before. People used to get pushed and forced into having nuclear family by their relatives but now people are more open to decided. People can be career women or form ‘gay’ families.

Divorce is being made a lot easier and so many people find divorce an easier option rather than being forced to stay together. Therefore I fell that there is a wide variety of different families in Britain – not just one.

The reasoning and explanation in this answer is exceptional. It needed more reference to examples and facts such as the point that Britain is multi-cultural and each culture has different family types.

Nicol McAuley
It is not just women who get stereotyped by the media, but men do too. Some disabled people can actually have better jobs than those who are not disabled.

A stereotype is a simplified and therefore false image that we have of someone. The media tend to use stereotypes frequently.

Jessica Holmes
A new man is a man who does not act according to gender stereotype. He takes care of the children, he cooks and he cleans. Both partners are equal in the marriage and they both do the same types of jobs.

A symmetrical family is when both men and women are equal in the marriage. They both do equal amounts of housework and their opinions count. The man does not make all of the important decisions.

The media present such a false image of gender and do it to such an extent that people begin to believe that these are images of how we behave. Women are sexy or are mothers and men are strong brave and heroic.

Anna Westmoreland
I think that men and women are becoming more equal. Women are having a chance to do some of the jobs that people regards and a man’s job. It works the other way too. Nowadays, women can become builders and doctors and lawyers and men can become make up artists and nurses. The old roles have changed.

Women are also becoming more equal because men are maturing more and their ideas are changing. They will look after the children and stay at home instead of going out drinking. More men are starting to regard women as equal to them too. They have stopped being so sexist. They no longer say that they can do more than women and they do not all get paid more.

Sian Fouracre
Single parents face many problems.

Financially – Sometimes a parent has to finish work in order to look after the family. This causes problems because the parent is not bringing money in. They may gget help from social services, but money is still tight.

Pressure – If the parent has not got anyone to baby-sit then that parent cannot go out for an evening with his or her friends. This can be depressing. This also means that s/he cannot find a new partner. The parent cannot go away on holidays if there is no money coming in to pay for food bills and the electric.

Laura Grasby
I agree with the statement that the nuclear family is a more normal family type in Britain today because there are not a lot of people in Britain who live with their grandparents. The newer houses are smaller than the older houses so there is no room for larger families.

I find that many people are less family orientated and many do not live close to their relatives. Many people are forced to move away because of their jobs. You very rarely find a family all living together in one area. It is also a lot easier to travel in today’s society so people do not feel the need to stay in one place. Many go off to see the world. Many people move to towns and cities where there is a wider variety of jobs.

The logic here is excellent but a conclusion is needed to tidy the whole argument up.
 

Emma Brown
Boys are taught to play with cars and guns which makes them feel big and strong. Their parents teach them how to behave and what to wear.

Boys see men on television as strong, clever and brave. Women are shown to be weak. In patriarchy, men have more power than women and this is because of their parents and their society. This shows how a real man should look and behave. Fathers and action heroes become role models for little boys.
   

Hooda Abu Garbieh
Families are essential for modern society.

They regulate sexual activity. This avoids the problem of in-breeding, and sex between close family members for example, father and daughter is looked down on. It considered immoral and not normal. This belief is known as the incest taboo. Problems of in-breeding include haemophilia which is a serious blood disease.

Families ensure that babies survive to become adult members of society. Children are incapable of looking after themselves really until after puberty. By this time they are physically able and in some cases, emotionally able, but they are never socially mature until about 18 years. Families teach children the rules of society and their place within it, Children are born egocentric and need to be socialised into knowing the rules of society.

Laura Grindley
The media are always stereotyping things. The main one I think is shampoo. They always make out that the shampoo will make your hair soft and manageable, just like you – They only ever have those words on shampoos sold as ‘ladies’ Men’s shampoo is likely to clean your hair for a healthy look. Women’s shampoo will make your hair soft and manageable, just like you.
 

Rachel Everson
Some of the most significant changes that have taken place in the media since 1945 are:

Television. This has been the most significant change because it has made the media more widespread. It is easy now, people can just switch on the television but before they had to make an effort to find things out. People used to rely on papers and books.

Computers. First of all they started out as things to play games on but they are used as a major source of information.

Victoria Hocking
There are recent advertisements on television which show a disabled person coming into a supermarket and a man coming up to her and fussing around to say that the staff were brilliant and if she needs any help, she was just to ask one of them. When the man gets to the checkout, the disabled person that he was fussing over works in the supermarket. This advert gives a positive image of disabled people instead of a false one. It is saying that even though people are disabled, they do not need look after or fussing around.

Naomi Lawrence
Formal sanction is when you have a set punishment for some kind of behaviour that some people do not agree with. People who are punished are people who are in prison, they have broken a certain set of rules. Sometimes these people are known as deviants.

You should never really trust a newspaper fully as they may contain value laden headlines more than value free. Vast amounts of money are involved in the media so they make the stories more interesting so that they will make more money. They make headlines value laden as they will receive more attention. Children may imitate the people they adopt as role models. If children do this with media celebrities, the media type is bound to be a hit. Some of these role models may represent false images of people. Most media communications contain false images of the world so that is why you should never really trust them.