O-Level Model Essay: A Wet Market (Descriptive)
This page shows you one full model answer. Plan and write your own attempt first, then compare it with this essay and read the notes on where it earns its marks.
What you have to do
| Part | Detail |
|---|---|
| Length | 350 to 500 words |
| Marked on | Content and Organisation, and Language |
| This essay type | Descriptive |
Sample question: Describe the sights and sounds of a wet market you know well.
A descriptive question tells you exactly what to put in. This one asks for two things, sights and sounds. Your essay has to give both, and keep giving both.
The model essay
The Tiong Bahru wet market wakes up before the rest of the neighbourhood. By six thirty the fish stalls have their lights on, and an uncle is already hosing down the tiles, the water sliding pink towards the drain. My grandmother likes to arrive before seven, before the crowd, and I like it too, though I would never admit that at half past five in the morning.
The first thing you hear is not a voice. It is the chopping. Every fish stall keeps its own rhythm, a cleaver coming down on a thick wooden block, quick and steady, like someone impatient with the morning. Then a whole seabass lands on the scale and the stallholder calls a price, and the auntie in front of me gasps as though the number were an insult. They go back and forth twice. They settle in the middle, and both of them look pleased with themselves.
Sounds pile up after that. A vegetable seller slaps bunches of chye sim against her palm to shake the water off, tak, tak, tak. Ice slides across a metal counter and cracks under the knife. Somewhere behind the egg stall a radio plays old songs, half swallowed by the noise, so you only catch the sad part of the tune. The butcher's saw whines through a rib. Somebody's trolley squeaks at the same tile every week, and everyone steps around that tile without looking.
I could walk this aisle blind. On my left the chicken stall hangs under a white fluorescent tube, pale pink and ice blue. Next to it the egg man builds trays into towers of ten, his thumb leaving a small dent in each carton. The tofu lady works in the steamiest corner of the market, and her buckets breathe out heat when you pass. At the end, near the drain, the fruit uncle stacks dragon fruit into a small red pyramid and never lets anyone touch the top row.
My grandmother stops at the fish stall we have used for years. The uncle has already seen us coming. He holds up two fish without being asked, weighs them, and waves away her offer to check the scale. "You again never trust me," he says, and she laughs, because she never does, and he always gives her the good one anyway.
By nine the crowd has thickened and the light comes down through the high windows in dusty stripes. The noise is at its loudest now, but it has a shape to it, and I have grown up inside that shape. We walk home with heavy bags and wet shoes, and the market carries on behind us, still arguing, still chopping.
Why this works
- The question asks for two things, sights and sounds. You keep both going from the first line to the last.
- The description moves through the market in time, from before dawn to mid morning. This gives it a shape, not a list of nice details.
- The details are too specific to be borrowed. Chye sim, dragon fruit and the squeaky tile belong to one market you truly know.
- You vary sentence length for effect, and short lines land between longer ones.
- The fish stall uncle is a person, not a prop. His small argument with your grandmother gives the market warmth.
- The ending leaves the market still working behind you. A description does not need a moral to finish well.
Pick a place you have been to many times. The details you remember without trying are the ones that score.
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