11 Plus Exams Forum

Can anyone advice on how much is expected when a 1 hour essay ig given?

How many pages of A4 is expected, just to help with pratice.

Thanks
Inspired2win

I'm not aware of what is expected despite my DS having just taken the Kent test. I suspect its quality rather than quanity. We didn't actually practice essay writing as I took the view that this is what the children learn and practice in school as part of the curriculum and in any event the essay is only taken into account in Kent on a HT review. I think its better to concentrate on VR and NVR and on any areas of weakness in Maths. I hope this is helpful.

We didn't do any English practice either. I think I may have spent an hour or so running through commas, full stops etc during the summer holidays but that was about it.

The only thing I did was to check ( the night before the test!) that my DS knew how to set out a letter, just in case this came up.

No writing practice here either. In fact, as my son was out of county so did all the tests in one go on a Saturday morning, I told him not to bother with it at all, or just write a few lines as I figured he would be exhausted by the time he got round to that.

Just to say, my sons writing piece was used during the HT appeal. We actually got a copy of this piece as we went to view papers at Maidstone and its the only part you are allowed to copy.
He wrote nearly a side of A4 - but his punctuation/spelling was NOT great. I would say the content, use of adjectives etc was a display of potential and this helped get him through.
One tip! We had a few 'big' special words thats he could spell that could fit in most types of writing. He actually managed to get most of them in (in context! which i think may have helped!! (Astounding, yearn, gusty, disastrous) How sad i can remember some