Sutton Boys' Second Stage English Mock Paper 10

This task is difficult on purpose, and the difficulty is not the letter format. It is the instruction to answer a case rather than to express a preference. Mr Okonkwo has told you in advance that he will not read another letter saying the sculpture is beautiful and that people love it. If your letter says that, in any of its disguises, it has failed the largest band before its writing is even considered. Start instead by writing his argument out in your plan, as strongly as you can put it: rust inspections cost three thousand pounds a year, that money comes from the same budget as everything else, and a large object in the middle of a square takes up space that a market or a crowd could use.

Now look again at the description, because the argument you need is inside it. Nine Winters is not decoration; it is made of the town's own discarded things. A school that no longer exists is part of it. So is a car from a company that no longer makes it, and forty-one wheels from bicycles nobody can now name, and a cleat from a ship that nobody can explain. Removing the sculpture removes the only place several of those things still exist. That is an argument about record and identity, and it is a great deal stronger than an argument about liking. The two views, a tree from the north and a figure with its back turned from the south, are similarly useful: an object that changes depending on where you stand is doing something a paved square cannot do.

Then take the two reasons in turn. The phrase returned to open use is worth examining, politely, because a market square with a market in it is already in open use, and a sculpture people walk round is not the same as a building. On the money, do not pretend three thousand pounds is nothing and do not invent a millionaire. Propose something modest and possible: an inspection every second year rather than every year, a Friends of Nine Winters group that raises part of the cost, an approach to the successor of the wheelworks that made it, a request that the decision is delayed for one year and put to a public consultation. One realistic proposal beats three ambitious ones, and it is what turns a complaint into a request.

Register is where strong candidates separate themselves here. You are eleven and you are writing to a senior council officer, which means the letter has to be respectful without being timid. Concede at the start that the council has a genuine problem and that public money is limited; you lose nothing by it and you gain a reader who is still listening in paragraph three. Avoid capital letters for emphasis, avoid exclamation marks entirely, and avoid any sentence that accuses him of not caring about the town. Because you have a name, open with Dear Mr Okonkwo and close with Yours sincerely.

The mistakes that cost most on this paper, in order: ignoring one of the two reasons, which is usually the money; writing about how the sculpture makes you feel after being told not to; proposing something the council cannot do, such as building it a museum; and running out of time before the proposal, which is the paragraph the whole letter exists for.

Timing: give this one ten minutes of planning, which is more than usual and is repaid. Write the council's case, your two answers, your proposal and your final request as five short notes. Write for about twenty-six minutes in five compact paragraphs. Keep the last five minutes to check the greeting and sign-off, the figures, and that your proposal is still there and still specific.