This set practises the process skills in timed reading and writing: planning, sharing time, recovering a paragraph, checking and reviewing. Work through the questions in order, from easier to harder, and open each answer only after you have written your own.
The time numbers are practice numbers, not the timings of a real paper. For the real exam, use your own year’s paper and the Cambridge information linked from the English First Language learning guide.
The questions
Q1. Reduce a list. A task asks for an article persuading teenagers to volunteer. Your brainstorm is: meet people, CV, feel useful, boring, free time, skills, animals, cost, friends, charity. Choose three points and put them in order.
Show answer
One good plan: 1 you learn skills (teamwork, organising); 2 you meet people outside your usual circle; 3 it gives a sense of purpose, which answers the “boring” objection. “CV” merges with skills, “friends” merges with meeting people, and “cost”, “animals”, “charity” and “free time” are details, not points. Any ordered set of three that each have a reason is acceptable.
Q2. Share the time. A practice lasts 50 minutes. Task A is worth 15 marks and Task B is worth 25 marks. Keep 10 minutes for the final check. How long for each task?
Show answer
Working time: 50 − 10 = 40 minutes. Total marks: 15 + 25 = 40. That is 1 minute per mark. Task A: 15 minutes. Task B: 25 minutes. Check: 15 + 25 + 10 = 50.
Q3. Three tasks. A 30-minute practice has tasks worth 10, 10 and 20 marks. Keep 2 minutes for checking. Give the time for each.
Show answer
Working time: 28 minutes. Total marks: 40. So 28 ÷ 40 = 0.7 minutes per mark. The tasks get 7, 7 and 14 minutes. Check: 7 + 7 + 14 = 28, and 28 + 2 = 30.
Q4. Read for purpose. Read this original passage, then answer.
On Friday evenings the car park behind the clinic fills with lamps and stalls. Mrs Tan sells kuih from a folding table, and three children wait with coins in their fists. A man tunes a guitar near the noodle cart, and nobody asks him to stop. By eight o’clock the crowd has thickened, and neighbours who have not spoken all week are swapping news over paper cups of soy milk.
(a) Write one sentence on the writer’s purpose. (b) Pick two details that support the idea that the market is a place where neighbours meet.
Show answer
(a) The writer’s purpose is to describe the market as a lively, friendly community space, not just a place to buy food. (b) Two strong details: “neighbours who have not spoken all week are swapping news” and “nobody asks him to stop”, which shows tolerance and shared ease. The kuih sale and the waiting children support the picture but say less about neighbours meeting.
Q5. Spot the drift. The planned point is “homework clubs help students finish tasks on time”. Which sentence drifts? (a) Students who attend can ask a teacher about a question straight away. (b) My brother’s football boots are bright orange. (c) Having a fixed hour makes it harder to delay starting.
Show answer
Sentence (b). It has no link to homework or timing. Sentences (a) and (c) each give a reason why a club supports finishing on time.
Q6. Redirect. Write one sentence that ties this drift back to the point “a school garden teaches responsibility”: The tomato plants grew a deep, glossy red over the term.
Show answer
A possible sentence: “That glossy red came from students watering, weeding and checking the plants every week, which is responsibility made visible.” It must connect the image to the benefit named in the point.
Q7. Final check. Correct the errors: Every students need a quiet place to study, there is not enough of them.
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“Every student needs a quiet place to study, and there are not enough of them.” Fixes: “every” takes a singular noun and verb, and the comma splice becomes a joined sentence with “and”. “Of them” now refers correctly to the places.
Q8. Check in order. Put these in the most sensible order for a final check and give a reason: spelling sweep, task match, ending.
Show answer
Task match, ending, spelling sweep. A wrong form or reader is the largest problem and can be fixed quickly. A missing or weak ending affects the whole impression. Small errors come last because they are the quickest to fix in any leftover minute.
Q9. Equal or by marks? In 40 minutes (no time kept back for a check), a student gives 20 minutes to a task worth 12 marks and 20 minutes to a task worth 28 marks. Show how long each should have had if time followed the marks, and say which task was squeezed.
Show answer
Total marks: 12 + 28 = 40, so each mark gets 40 ÷ 40 = 1 minute. The tasks should have had 12 and 28 minutes. The 28-mark task was squeezed by 8 minutes, and the other was given 8 more than its share.
Q10. Review, not label. A student writes: “I ran out of time again, so I am hopeless.” The timings were: reading 4 minutes, plan 3, paragraph one 18, the other two paragraphs 10 together, total 35. Write a review with a cause and an action.
Show answer
Timings add to 35, which fits the session. Paragraph one used 18 minutes, more than half the time, while two paragraphs shared 10. Review: “Paragraph one took over half my time because I kept improving the opening, so the rest was rushed. Next time I will set a limit for each paragraph in the plan and leave the opening until the final check.” No grade prediction is needed.
If you got these wrong
| Error type | Questions | Go to |
|---|---|---|
| Too many ideas, unordered plan | Q1 | Plan a response before drafting |
| Time split wrongly or arithmetic slip | Q2, Q3, Q9 | Allocate effort using the verified task requirements |
| Missed the purpose or detail in the passage | Q4 | Reading across viewpoints and audience and purpose planner |
| Did not spot or fix a drifting paragraph | Q5, Q6 | Recover when a paragraph goes off-topic |
| Missed errors or checked in the wrong order | Q7, Q8 | Leave time for a targeted final check |
| Turned the review into a label | Q10 | Review an unfinished answer without grade prediction |
Record each repeated slip in the mistake log and retest queue, then retry a fresh question of that type a few days later. Use the writing revision compare view to put a first draft next to a revised one.
If the same error type returns after a second try, it usually needs someone watching you work. That is the kind of review we do in online one-to-one English First Language tuition.