What are the UK 11+ exams?
The 11+ exam is part of the primary and secondary education system in some parts of the UK. It is designed to help schools screen and admit students suitable for secondary school education. This exam usually includes subjects such as mathematics, English, reasoning and writing, and is designed to test students' academic ability and intellectual level.
Creative Writing
Creative Writing is part of the exam and an important part of a student's overall academic ability. It not only tests students' language and literary skills, but also demonstrates their creative thinking and imagination. But creative writing is not like mathematics, it does not have a set answer to judge.
Great literary works are the representative of an era through long-term continuous polishing. Time-constrained articles are not the way to create great literary works. So for children around 11 years old, creative writing within 30-40 minutes is a very challenging task. This requires children to write well so that the examiner can see the plot described by the children in the article, and also requires children to write quickly.
Basic language technology features
There is no magic formula to follow for an excellent essay, like math, but students can impress examiners in the exam because examiners look for the following features in writing: accurate spelling of common high-frequency words and accurate use of diverse punctuation marks.
For students, there is no need to choose easier words just to get the spelling right. Using some excellent words, even with some spelling errors, is better than using basic words that are spelled correctly. If children know that their writing will not be judged on every word, it may make them more confident and proactive in writing, thereby improving their writing level. Regarding the use of punctuation, simply using capital letters and periods correctly will not bring high scores to the essay. Students need to confidently demonstrate a range of punctuation, including commas in clauses and brackets, phonetic punctuation, colons and semicolons.
Interesting article content
Essays that are creative and original are very popular with examiners. However, it is not easy for children to explain the essay topic in a special way and write something that can stand out. It requires a lot of practice.
This requires parents and teachers to spend time with their children to review the sample essays and think of as many different ways to describe the content in the sample essays as possible. The whole process does not require you to really write them all out, but to choose to practice the most interesting and feasible ideas. For example, write a narrative essay with a title "Crossing the Line". Then it may be about a game, it may be about a war zone, or it may describe something inappropriate or wrong. Everyone will have different insights on this topic, and students can try to write something more original and unique.
Appropriate and novel writing structure
In addition to the content of the article, which is what the examiner focuses on, the structure of the writing is equally important. Unusual methods such as flashback, first-person narration and unexpected perspectives are all ways to show more complex writing. Build up some understanding of article structure through your child's reading, and find paragraphs in the stories you read that meet these techniques for analysis and learning.
Of course, if you want to get high scores in Creative Writing, you need to practice constantly to improve your child's writing skills. But for parents, it is necessary to cultivate children's interest in writing, rather than focusing all attention on exams. Parents should help children and teachers make writing interesting, and help children find some special people or things in daily life, such as finding some interesting people or products in places such as supermarkets, and write stories about them. Guide children to write down their dreams or what they see on TV programs, or help children develop the habit of writing diaries to record what happens in life, which is conducive to finding inspiration in writing in a timely manner.
Style and vocabulary
The use of vocabulary is self-explanatory and students must take risks in using some vocabulary. Memorizing and misusing vocabulary does not impress the examiner. And as a parent, discussing language with your child and the subtle differences between seemingly similar words is also a way to improve your child's vocabulary in daily life.
Style includes figurative language, the use of grammar, etc. Figurative language includes metaphors, similes, and personification. In addition to reading books to learn metaphor skills, poetry reading is also important. Because poetry is full of figurative language such as personification. The correct use of grammar has a great influence on the effect of the entire article. The correct use of grammar is not just a matter of using the right words, but also includes the choice of different sentence lengths, tenses, and perspectives. Children need to understand through reading, why is it effective? What does it make you understand? An excellent descriptive article can be explained from a first-person perspective to give it some immediacy and impact. A nostalgic story requires children to use the past tense and perhaps some language that fits the times.
How to Improve Writing Speed
Writing speed is also something students need to practice, and it is helpful to use a clearly visible timer when children are writing. From another perspective, guiding children to draw on articles they have written before can also save time to a certain extent. For example, students have described a storm very well in their homework assignments at school, so why not set a story called "Lost" on the mountain where the storm is? At this point, some creative thinking has actually been done. If students have read a book where the characters are lost, why not use some of the words that describe their facial expressions in their writing? Although rote memorization is not advisable, flexible use of articles you have written and books you have read can help students speed up their writing.
It is very difficult for children to plan their writing within a limited time. Parents and teachers need to encourage children not to be obsessed with coming up with a perfect writing plan. It is really difficult to come up with a brilliant idea in 5 minutes. The examiner assesses not only the plot, but also an "okay" idea that is quickly conceived and has enough time to be written into a wonderful essay, which also has the opportunity to get a high score. On the contrary, if the child focuses on coming up with a brilliant plot, wastes most of the time and does not have time to complete the whole essay, the score will be much lower.
Core test points and topics
11+ Creative Writing has a core theme, which includes emotions or feelings. Here are some useful topics to consider when building and improving your child's writing material and writing skills:
- Animals: usually describe your pet or your favorite animal or an animal you are afraid of. Be prepared to use literary techniques such as personification or exaggeration or even simple similes to make your child's writing description more vivid.
- Emotions and feelings: Stories often include a request to describe emotions, such as fear, joy or feelings of being lost or lonely. These can be easily asked to describe through essay titles such as "My Great Day". Sometimes, the essay title will clearly guide the child to write in a very specific direction.
- Activities you like to do: This is a chance to describe the activity itself, from hiking to gardening and anything in between that you like, and how it makes you feel.
- The natural world: This can be hills, mountains, rivers, streams, lightning, the feeling of rain or sunshine, or the look of grass or wheat fields. Students always find this type of writing material useful.
- Built environment: Houses, office buildings, villas or castles. There are also roads, bridges, churches and sheds. It is always useful to help children develop some ideas about how to describe the built environment.
- Story essays: Story essays can be long or short, and students are generally asked to continue the story.
In summary, when children learn good writing examples and read quality literature, they will learn a lot of writing skills and accumulate a lot of writing materials. This is the simplest and most effective way to help children improve their writing skills.
Good writing is original and well thought out, and the author is constantly making choices about what will happen next or how the characters will react and what language will most effectively convey their meaning. If students begin to make these conscious choices, then it will be easy for children to become successful writers who can create engaging works.
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