Sutton Boys' Second Stage English Mock Paper 8

A review is an argument with a view, and the view has to be decided before the first sentence is written. Your reader wants one thing from you: should I ask my family to pay for this? Everything in the piece exists to answer that. This is why the plan begins with the verdict rather than ending with it. Once you know you are going to say that it is worth every penny if you like being slightly frightened, or that the storytellers are extraordinary and the hot chocolate is a disgrace, you know which three moments of the evening to write about.

Use the advertisement as something to test, not as something to copy. The claims are all there waiting: seven storytellers, a lantern for every visitor, hot chocolate at halfway, two hours, no torches, no phones, and the best night out you will have this autumn. A strong reviewer picks these up one at a time. Were there seven, or were two of the points empty because it rained? Does no phones sound annoying in an advertisement and turn out to be the best thing about the evening? That last kind of observation, where the reality reverses the expectation, is the sort of thing markers remember.

The instruction to include something that did not work is not there to make you negative. It is there because a review that admires everything persuades nobody. Balance is what makes the praise believable, and it is worth marks in two bands at once. Choose a real, specific fault rather than a grumble: a queue at the gate in the cold, a storyteller whose voice did not carry, a walk too long for the younger children who had been promised they could come.

Three mistakes cost most on this task. The first is the recount: we arrived at seven, then we got our lanterns, then we walked, then we had hot chocolate. That is a diary, and it earns almost nothing for form. The second is forgetting the audience and reviewing it as an adult would, worrying about parking and value for money rather than about how it feels to be handed a real flame in a dark wood. The third is slang. Your readers are your own age, but the piece is being printed, so the voice can be relaxed and funny while the writing stays accurate.

Timing: seven minutes planning, spent on the verdict, the three pieces of evidence and the last line. Around twenty-eight minutes writing, in four or five paragraphs. Five minutes to check speech marks around anything you have quoted from the advertisement and to make sure your ending actually recommends something rather than trailing off.