Marking a practice paper

Post by **patricia** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:20 pm

Dear Nicki

Have you looked on the reverse of the Test A marking scheme? Thats where mine are...

Patricia

Rob Clark · Post by **Rob Clark** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 11:24 am

1.Four letters hidden at the end of one word and the beginning of another to make a new word.

I had a cheese sandwich for lunch

Classic example of a typically poorly worded question.

A one-letter word doesnâ€™t have a beginning and an end so it is grammatically incorrect to describe the word â€˜acheâ€™ as being formed by letters â€˜hidden at the end of one word and the beginning of anotherâ€™.

Nicki6567 · Post by **Nicki6567** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:26 pm

Hi Rob,

And this is possibly the reason why we both missed it, as were sub consciously dismissing 'a' as a word...

Nicki6567 · Post by **Nicki6567** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:30 pm

patricia wrote:Dear Nicki

Have you looked on the reverse of the Test A marking scheme? Thats where mine are...

Patricia

I apologise - again! I have found them in the back of the booklet. It was a long day!

I was expecting it to be a loose sheet, as per the sheets that our tutor supplies.

And thank you Sally-Anne for the email.

Tree · Post by **Tree** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 9:25 pm

i'm just marking a paper of my sons it's not one of the familiarisation tests they havn't started them yet but its a paper without answers and and have to say it takes me just as long as my son to do it and that the questions are really hard take this for example :

three words related:

rim cliff edge boundary cricket

my son went for cliff and cricket which he is sure is right but i reckon you could make a good case for boundary and cricket

we really are creating a cohort of kids incredibly skilled in VR it's a shame it has so little use for anything else if we put this number of hours into maths i'm sure they could prbably pass ks4 or gcse.

yoyo123 · Post by **yoyo123** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 9:38 pm

I would say rim, edge, bounday were the 3 words in the set

Tree · Post by **Tree** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 9:46 pm

exactly you and my son are cleverer than me how does that make me feel

Sally-Anne · Post by **Sally-Anne** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 10:08 pm

Those questions often have a "red herring" or two in them - in this case:

- cricket and boundary

- cliff and edge

Work left to right from the first word - does it match one other, two others? If not, move on to the next word. As soon as there are 3 clear matches, check that the remaining word is not an option and move on to the next question.

They can also be tackled by ruling out the word that doesn't match - cricket clearly only has one possible connection - boundary - so it can be ruled out straight away. That only leaves 4 words to deal with.