11 Plus Exams Forum

Hello everyone,

I am hoping someone will be able to guide me re the above please.

DS will be sitting Independent school exams this term in which part of the English paper requires him to write a 30 min composition. He will have a choice between 2 / 3 topics.

We are practising writing these within the 30 min time limit and he is managing to do it but I would like some guidance as to how I go about marking them ie should it be marked on the story or is it more technical ie use of adverbs, similes, synonyms, different sentence lengths etc. I am assuming it would be both but what i'm not sure about is the allocation of marks to the above. Does anyone know?!

Thanks in advance
Coolmum

Hi Coolmum,

Sorry I can't help you, but I was told by a teacher that there was a wide disparity amongst teachers in marking compositions. I think your son is doing pretty well with the 30 mins target and what my son's tutor said was to write down adverbs, adjectives, similes, punctuation etc on a side and cross them off as he starts inluding them in the story. Hence they did carry some marks but the bulk was for the standard of the story.

You mentioned in the comprehension of quoting from passage; I thought you don't quote from passage unless if the question asks for this. You pick from the passage and write in your "own words" or would lose valuable marks. Please check this with a teacher as I may be wrong and I never helped my son with English directly, but rather learnt together with him from his tutor. Good luck with all the tests.

hi Vas,

thanks for your reply I found it most helpful.
With regards for the comprehension part i don't think I explained myself very well in the original posting, but what I meant was the DS use words from the passage as evidence and then to explain the answer further.

Regards