Grammar schools / NWSSEE English (continuous writing) / Mock 6
Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination · Second Stage
NWSSEE English Mock Paper 6
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
The Door on the Sands: the opening of a story.
The tide had been out for an hour when Ines found the door. It was lying flat in the sand with its frame still around it, as though a house had been carried away and had dropped this one piece on its way. The paint was green and blistered, there was a brass handle worn bright, and a number seven was screwed on crooked.
She knelt and put her palm against the wood. It was warm, which was wrong, because nothing on that beach was warm by four o'clock in October. Behind her, a long way off, her brother was calling her name across the flats, and she found that she did not turn round.
Write the continuation of this story to entertain a reader who has just read the opening above.
Planning: your continuation must begin with this sentence, exactly as it is written here.
"Ines had been told about the door before, but not by anyone still alive to ask."
An answer prepared in advance of the examination, which does not fit the form or the task given here, will be awarded 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 continuation, not a fresh story and not a retelling of the extract. It picks up where the opening stops and keeps its narrative voice, its past tense and its third person.
- It begins with the given sentence, word for word, before anything else.
- Ines, the door and the beach setting are carried forward. Replacing the character or the setting fails the task.
- The purpose is to entertain the reader of the opening: the story must move, and it must end rather than stop.
- A memorised story steered towards this extract, which does not address the form or the task set, receives no marks overall.
Content and audience (10 marks)
- 9-10: The given sentence is taken seriously, so the reader learns who told Ines about the door and what that costs her now. The strangeness of the opening is developed rather than explained away. The brother, the warmth of the wood or the crooked number seven are used again with purpose. The ending answers something without answering everything.
- 6-8: A convincing continuation with real events and some development of the mystery. One thread from the opening is left unused, or the ending is hurried.
- 3-5: The story moves but the given sentence is not paid off, or the strangeness collapses into a dream or a prank.
- 0-2: A new story, or a paragraph that restates the extract in different words.
Structure and style (8 marks)
- 7-8: Pacing is controlled: tension is built, held and released deliberately. Paragraphs break at genuine shifts. Sentence length is varied for effect, short sentences being saved for the moments that need them. Description matches the register of the extract instead of switching to a different kind of writing.
- 5-6: Clear shape with a beginning, a middle and a deliberate end. Some passages linger longer than they need to.
- 3-4: Events are listed one after another, or the tone lurches between the eerie and the chatty.
- 0-2: No control of pacing or paragraphing.
Technical accuracy (7 marks)
- 6-7: The past tense is held throughout. Speech, if used, is punctuated correctly and given its own lines. Sentence demarcation is accurate even in long descriptive sentences, and spelling is secure.
- 4-5: Broadly accurate, with occasional tense slips or speech punctuation errors.
- 2-3: Repeated comma splices, or a narrative that moves between past and present without reason.
- 0-1: Errors frequent enough to break the atmosphere the story is trying to build.
A continuation is a test of reading as much as of writing. Before you write a word, notice what the opening has already given you: a third person narrator, the past tense, a specific October beach, a brother who is calling and being ignored, wood that is warm when it should be cold, and a number seven fixed on crooked. Every one of those is a thread you can pull. The examiner is watching to see whether you noticed them.
The sentence you must begin with is a gift and a trap. It tells the reader that Ines already knows something, and that whoever told her is dead. If you write it and then never explain who told her, the strongest thing in your continuation goes to waste. If you explain it fully in the second line, you have spent your mystery in twenty seconds. The best answers let it out slowly, perhaps in something Ines remembers while her hand is still on the wood.
Match the voice you have been given. The extract is quiet and exact: it does not shout, it does not use three adjectives where one will do, and its scariest line is simply that the wood was warm. If your continuation suddenly fills with screaming and lightning, the join will show. Keep the same restraint and your writing will look far more accomplished than a page of dramatic language.
The three commonest ways to lose marks here are all endings. Waking up throws away the whole story. Explaining that the brother had built the door as a joke deflates it. Stopping halfway because time ran out leaves the examiner with no ending to reward. Decide your last line during your planning minutes so that it is waiting for you.
Plan for five minutes: who told her, what is behind the door or under it, whether she opens it, and what the final line will be. Write for about thirty-three minutes and check the clock when you are two thirds down the page, since a continuation must reach a close. Spend the final five minutes on tense consistency and on any sentence held together by commas that needed a full stop.
Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination, Second Stage, English (continuous writing). Written by Revision Library on 2026-08-28, independent check pending.
The rest of the set
Free 11+ mock papers, no login
Original papers with full mark schemes and worked explanations, printable as PDFs.