Everything Exams

Apologies for my previous post! The words somehow got chewed up and changed when I clicked ‘Publish’! Attempt 2…

 This week, I discussed with one of my students the importance of punctuation and we talked about how an exclamation mark or comma can completely transform the meaning of a sentence. I showed her an example of the sometimes controversial Oxford comma being used:

Alena loves her friends, Jean, and Henrietta.

In this sentence, Alena loves three different categories of people: her friends and also a couple of other people called Jean and Henrietta.

Alena loves her friends, Jean and Henrietta.

With one less comma, Alena now only loves two people, her friends who are called Jean and Henrietta.

My student and I also looked at the impact of inverted commas in a newspaper article:

PRISONER ‘ACCIDENTALLY’ ESCAPES

The inverted commas added in this headline indicate that the escape might not have been accidental at all…

The use of an ellipsis, in my final example, gives the impression that there may be many different options the author could have chosen for their blog post:

Deep Dive into … Higher Level Punctuation for 11 Plus

I loved the reaction of my student to our discussion as I don’t think she had really considered the effect punctuation could have on someone reading her work. This was my inspiration for today’s post 🙂

In creative writing tasks at 11 plus, basic punctuation skills are taken as a baseline requirement. I would expect to see capital letters and full stops used correctly pretty much throughout a candidate’s piece of writing. Commas, apostrophes, exclamation marks, and question marks should also be included where appropriate.

At 11 plus, speech should be correctly punctuated too. I may do another blog post covering this at some point as I’ve seen many weird and wonderful interpretations of the rules for punctuating speech at this level. Schools do cover this but I would suggest a bit of extra work is done to fully understand how to punctuate speech – especially when more than one person talks – and I would strongly advise candidates to limit themselves to a maximum of two examples. Some schools even advise candidates on their sample papers to avoid speech. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, it minimises errors in such an important exam, and secondly, speech tends to be time consuming to write, which leaves a candidate with less time to construct interesting sentences using other writing techniques to wow the examiner with.min any exam, there will be some form of creative writing mark scheme and, in order to demonstrate creative writing skills in all areas and achieve a high grade, students need to spend time producing sentences which showcase a wide range of literary techniques, not just speech. This brings me back to punctuation in general…

An 11 plus creative writing mark scheme may well include a section on the use of higher level punctuation somewhere in a creative writing piece. It is therefore a good idea to try to include at least one example of the use of more advanced punctuation to impress your examiner and provide them with evidence of your skills. Colons, semicolons, and dashes are great for this.

SEMICOLONS

Semicolons can be added easily between sentences in your writing which are connected in some way. They can also be used to separate items or ideas in a list, but I tend to use commas for this instead. Here are some examples of their use:

Goldilocks grabbed the final bowl of porridge; she gobbled it up, greedily.

We had a great day out; the pier is my favourite place to visit.

Pat looked behind the sofa; he searched between the cushions; finally, he scrambled about in his hands and knees, scouring the carpet for the last piece of his puzzle.

For the expedition, Jamal needed to pack several important items: a map; a compass; and a large bag of candy.

COLONS

Colons can be used just before a list or explanation, or between two sentences. Two sentences separated be a semicolon carry equal weight but with a colon, the second sentence is more important or adds extra information.

The lion had escaped from its enclosure: they needed to find an exit, fast!

The roads were icy: it was dangerous to drive.

There was a reason the PM never took off his gloves: his hands were green and covered in scales.

There many options on the menu: lasagne, pizza, and linguine.

DASHES

Dashes can be used like colons to point to extra information, or they can be used to create a break in the sentence. A pair of them can be used to insert extra information.

The party was starting at 4pm – Jake needed to finish his project in the next thirty minutes.

“Take your shoes off – not your jackets – when you enter,” shouted the steward.

The pale, grey wolf – the leader of the pack – edged forwards.

The best way to prepare for the creative element of 11 plus assessments is to check out the writing tasks in practice papers from your target school and those of schools similar to your target school, and practise, practise, and practise some more. Regular practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect but it does make a massive difference to your grade. When editing your writing, it you spot a couple of sentences which are connected in some way, stick a semi – colon between them. If you add an extra piece of information into a sentence, consider placing it between two dashes, and if you can include a list of some sort, fish out a colon in front of your items. It doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated but it does need to be there for top marks…