Grammar schools / NWSSEE English (continuous writing) / Mock 5
Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination · Second Stage
NWSSEE English Mock Paper 5
Preparation for the Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination, sat for admission to Nonsuch High School for Girls and Wallington High School for Girls. This is an original mock paper written by Revision Library. It is not a past paper and it is not an official specimen.
Print the paper (PDF)Paper and mark scheme (PDF)
- Time allowed
- 45 minutes
- Total marks
- 25
- Questions
- 1
- Level
- Strong candidate
- You have 45 minutes for this paper. There is one task and it is worth 25 marks.
- Spend about five minutes planning and checking your work, and about forty minutes writing.
- Write your answer on the lined pages of this booklet. There is no rough paper, so make your plan in the space beneath the task.
- Read the whole task, including the planning box, before you start. Marks are given for covering everything you are asked to cover.
- Marks are given for how well your writing matches the form, the audience and the purpose you are given, and for your spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Continuous Writing
Answer this one task. Write in sentences and paragraphs.
- 125 marks
"Object of the Month. Chosen, researched and written by one of our young volunteers."
The small museum in your area gives one object its own page on the website each month. This month's object is a leather football, hand stitched, laced along one seam and worn almost smooth on one side. It was found in the loft of a house that was being cleared. Tucked inside it was a folded paper label reading: Won 1938. Do not throw away.
Write the page for the museum's website to describe the football for visitors who cannot see it and to explain why an ordinary object like this is worth keeping.
Planning: your page must cover all three of these points.
- a description exact enough that a reader could pick this football out of a room full of footballs
- what the label tells us, and what it deliberately does not tell us
- why a museum keeps objects that are neither rare nor valuable
An answer that was written before the examination and reproduced from memory, and that does not meet the form or the task set here, will be given no marks.
Spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Answers, mark scheme and worked explanations
- 125 marks
Gate: form and task (pass or fail)
- The answer is a page for a website: it has a heading or an opening that orients a visitor who arrived from a search, and it is written to be read on a screen by a stranger.
- It informs, explains and describes. It is not a story about the boy who won the football in 1938, however well told that story might be.
- It is written for museum visitors, including families, rather than for the writer's classmates or for a marker.
- All three planning points are covered, including the harder third one about why ordinary objects are kept.
- An obviously pre-prepared answer that does not address this form or this task receives no marks overall.
Content and audience (10 marks)
- 9-10: The description is genuinely discriminating, working through material, size, wear, stitching and smell rather than repeating that it is old and brown. The point about the label is handled with real care: the writer separates what is known from what is only guessed. The explanation of why museums keep ordinary things is thought through, not borrowed. The tone welcomes a family without talking down to a child.
- 6-8: All three points are covered and the description contains several precise details. The distinction between what the label tells us and what it does not is made, though briefly.
- 3-5: The description is general, or the writer invents a confident history for the football and presents guesswork as fact. The third point is answered in a sentence.
- 0-2: Little description, or a page that becomes a story about 1938.
Structure and style (8 marks)
- 7-8: Organised for a reader on a screen: a strong opening line, short purposeful paragraphs, and a clear move from what the object is, to what we know about it, to why it is here. Vocabulary is precise and technical where it needs to be. The style is warm but never gushing.
- 5-6: Clearly paragraphed with a sensible order. Some paragraphs cover two ideas at once.
- 3-4: Ideas arrive in the order they occurred to the writer, and the reader has to reassemble them.
- 0-2: No structure, or a single undivided block of text.
Technical accuracy (7 marks)
- 6-7: Accurate sentence demarcation and punctuation, including commas in lists of description and correct handling of the quoted label. Spelling is secure, including words such as leather, stitched, museum and valuable.
- 4-5: Mostly accurate, with a few slips in punctuation or in ambitious vocabulary.
- 2-3: Repeated sentence errors, or the quoted label punctuated inconsistently.
- 0-1: Errors frequent enough to slow the reader down.
This task rewards precision above everything. You are describing an object your reader cannot see, so every vague word is a wasted one. Old, nice and interesting tell a visitor nothing. The colour of the leather where the rain got in, the way the lacing has cut a groove into the seam, the fact that one panel is polished paler than the rest because it was always the side that was kicked: those tell a visitor everything, and they also quietly explain how the football was used.
The second planning point is the one that separates the strongest answers. The label says the football was won in 1938 and that it should not be thrown away. That is all it says. It does not say who won it, what competition it was, or why it mattered enough for somebody to write a warning and hide it inside the ball. A strong answer says exactly that, and is honest about the difference between evidence and guessing. You are allowed to wonder aloud, as long as you signal that you are wondering.
The third point asks you to think, not to recite. A museum keeps ordinary objects because rare ones only tell you about rare lives, because an ordinary football is evidence of how thousands of people actually spent their Saturdays, or because the note inside it is proof that somebody once thought this object mattered. Any of those, developed properly, will do. A single sentence saying museums keep history will not.
The mistakes to avoid are clear. Do not turn the page into a story about a boy in 1938: that is a different triplet and the gate will catch it. Do not state invented facts as though the museum has confirmed them. And do not write a solid page with no paragraph breaks, because a website page that cannot be scanned has failed at its own job.
Use five minutes to plan: list six physical details first, because those are the hardest to invent under pressure, then one line for the label and one line for the argument about ordinary objects. Write for about thirty-three minutes, giving the description roughly a third of your space and not more. Keep five minutes to reread, checking the quoted label is punctuated the same way each time and that no guess has been left standing as a fact.
Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination, Second Stage, English (continuous writing). Written by Revision Library on 2026-08-28, independent check pending.
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