Grammar schools / NWSSEE English (continuous writing) / Mock 7
Nonsuch and Wallington Second Stage Entrance Examination · Second Stage
NWSSEE English Mock Paper 7
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
"From April, the mobile library will no longer stop at villages with fewer than four hundred residents. The service will be reviewed again in two years."
The van parks by your village hall for two hours every other Thursday. About thirty people use it and roughly half of them cannot easily get to the town library. The county council says the van costs more for each book borrowed than any other part of the library service, and that figure is not wrong.
Write a formal letter to the head of the county library service to persuade her to reconsider the decision and to advise her what could be done instead.
Planning: your letter must cover all three of these points.
- why cost for each book borrowed is a misleading way to measure what this van does
- what would actually happen to the people who cannot travel to the town library
- one alternative that would save the council money and still reach the villages
An answer that has been learnt by heart before the examination, and that does not address the form or the task set on this page, will score nothing.
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 formal letter. It carries a formal salutation and the matching sign-off, and it sustains a formal register from first line to last. An email of complaint, a speech or an article fails here.
- It is addressed to the head of the library service, an adult who made the decision for reasons she believes in, and it treats her accordingly.
- It persuades and it advises. A letter that objects without proposing anything cannot pass this gate.
- All three planning points are covered, including the alternative that saves money.
- An answer that is plainly pre-prepared and does not address this form or this task is awarded no marks overall.
Content and audience (10 marks)
- 9-10: The argument engages with the council's own reasoning rather than ignoring it: the writer accepts the cost figure and then shows why it measures the wrong thing. Consequences are made concrete through particular people rather than through the word community. The alternative is practical, costed in rough terms, and could genuinely be acted on. The register is courteous and firm at the same time.
- 6-8: A clear, polite case with developed reasons and a workable alternative. The counter-argument is acknowledged rather than fully answered.
- 3-5: Feeling rather than argument. The cost point is denied instead of addressed, or the alternative is simply that the council should find the money.
- 0-2: No sustained argument, or advice that is missing altogether.
Structure and style (8 marks)
- 7-8: Built like a real letter of persuasion: an opening that states who is writing and why, one clear idea in each paragraph, an ordering that puts the strongest point where it will be remembered, and a close that asks for something specific. Formal vocabulary is used accurately and connectives carry the argument forward.
- 5-6: Well organised and properly paragraphed, though the ordering of the points is not obviously deliberate.
- 3-4: The three points blur into one another, or the letter opens without saying what it is about.
- 0-2: No structure, or a letter that never makes a request.
Technical accuracy (7 marks)
- 6-7: Formal conventions are correct, including the pairing of the salutation with the right sign-off. Sentence demarcation, commas in complex sentences and apostrophes are accurate, and spelling is secure in words such as service, community, residents and alternative.
- 4-5: Accurate in the main, with a few punctuation or spelling slips.
- 2-3: Repeated sentence errors, or contractions and slang that undercut the formal register.
- 0-1: Frequent errors that would make the letter hard to take seriously.
The hardest and most rewarding thing in this task is the fact that the council is not lying. The van really does cost more for each book than anything else the library service runs. If you write a letter that pretends otherwise, an adult reader stops believing you on the first page. If instead you accept the figure and attack the measurement, you are doing something far more impressive: you are arguing.
There are good ways to do that. A van that reaches somebody who cannot leave her village is not really lending a book, it is the only visit some people get that fortnight. Books borrowed is easy to count and companionship is not, and things that are hard to count are the first to be cut. Make that point once, clearly, with one example, and it will carry more weight than three paragraphs of indignation.
The third planning point is where most candidates run out of ideas, so think about it during your planning minutes rather than when you reach it. A shorter stop in more villages. One monthly visit instead of two, which halves the cost rather than removing the service. A volunteer driver, a delivery arranged through the village shop, or a collection point at the hall. You do not need to be right about the finances. You need to show that you can propose something instead of only refusing.
Three things lose marks reliably. Slipping out of formal register into contractions and exclamation marks. Emotional blackmail, such as telling the head of the service that she is destroying the village, which makes a reasonable adult stop reading. And forgetting to ask for anything, so that the letter ends without a request. Say plainly what you want: that the decision is paused, or reviewed, or that she meets a group from the village before April.
Plan for five minutes, deciding your alternative first because it is the hardest part. Write for about thirty-three minutes in five or six paragraphs, giving each planning point its own. Leave five minutes to check that your salutation and sign-off match, that no contractions have crept in, and that your final paragraph actually asks for something.
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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