Primary 6 · English · Continuous Writing
Continuous Writing questions for Primary 6 English
10 questions to work through online, 3 of them written out the way the paper asks. Answer and you get the working straight away, then a score at the end. No sign-up, and you can retake it as often as you like.
- Reading the theme
- Choosing the picture
- Cutting background
- Showing character through action
- Handling time
- Endings
- Paragraphing for effect
- Writing a stronger verb
- Cutting a filler
- Writing a connector
Answers and explanations for all 10 questions
Every answer with the reasoning behind it. Worth reading after you have tried the set — or on its own, if you are a parent marking it.
The theme is "A Promise". Which story fits it best?
Answer: A girl who promised to keep a secret and then has to decide whether to break it.
A theme is a test the story has to pass. A promise only becomes a story when keeping it costs something.
The theme is "Courage" and the three pictures are a stethoscope, a bicycle and an empty stage. You have never been on a stage. Which should you choose?
Answer: Whichever gives you a specific memory you can make into a scene.
The picture is a way in, not a subject. The one that unlocks a real memory will always produce more specific writing than the one that looks best.
Which sentence should be cut?
Answer: Sentence 3
Which floor the flat is on never matters again. Sentences 1, 2 and 4 all carry the story; sentence 3 is furniture.
Which sentence shows that the father was worried, without saying so?
Answer: He read the message, put the phone face down on the table and asked whether anyone wanted more rice.
Turning the phone over hides it; offering rice changes the subject. The reader works out the worry from what he does, which is what showing means.
Your story covers three days but only one afternoon matters. What should you do?
Answer: Cover the other two days in a sentence each and give the afternoon most of the composition.
How much space something gets is how important it looks. Summarise what leads up to the moment, then slow right down for the moment itself.
Your composition opens: "I had never seen my grandmother lose her temper." Which ending answers it?
Answer: She did not raise her voice once in that office, and the clerk was on the phone to the contractor before we left.
The opening promises us her temper. The ending keeps the promise by showing she never needed it — and that the calm worked.
Why might a writer give one short sentence a paragraph of its own?
Answer: To slow the reader down and make that sentence land.
White space around a sentence is a way of pointing at it. Used once in a composition it is powerful; used often it stops working.
Replace the marked words with one stronger verb. The old bus [went slowly and with difficulty] up the hill towards Mandai.
Answer: crawled
Crawled carries the slowness and the effort in a single word, so the sentence stops needing five to say it.
One word in the marked part adds nothing. Write the word to delete. He [suddenly realised all of a sudden] that the gate was locked.
Answer: suddenly
Suddenly and all of a sudden say exactly the same thing. Cutting one of them is the whole repair.
Write one word for the blank. I had rehearsed the apology all the way home. ______ , the moment she looked up I said nothing at all.
Answer: However
The second sentence overturns what the first sets up, and However is the word that marks the reversal.