Primary 4 · English · Continuous Writing
Continuous Writing questions for Primary 4 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.
- Choosing an opening
- Relevance
- Showing rather than telling
- Ordering events
- Holding a tense
- Paragraphing
- Choosing an ending
- Writing a stronger verb
- Writing a connector
- Writing a precise noun
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.
Which opening sentence makes a reader want to read on?
Answer: The lift doors opened on the fourteenth floor, and my bicycle was gone.
It drops the reader into the moment something goes wrong, which is what makes a reader carry on.
Which sentence should be taken out of the paragraph?
Answer: Sentence 3
What the uncle does for a living and how often he visits have nothing to do with the kite. Sentence 3 is the one the paragraph does not need.
Which sentence shows that the boy was nervous, rather than telling the reader?
Answer: He read the first line of his speech four times and still did not know what it said.
Reading a line four times without taking it in is something a reader can picture, and it lets them work out the feeling for themselves.
Put these events in the order they must have happened: P. We searched the void deck. Q. The rain started. R. My sister noticed the puppy was missing. S. We found it asleep under the staircase.
Answer: R, P, Q, S
Noticing comes first, then the search, and the finding must come last. R, P, Q, S is the only order where each event has a reason to follow the one before it.
Which sentence breaks the tense of the story? The story so far is written in the past tense.
Answer: I look at my watch and realise the shop is about to close.
Look, realise and is are all present tense in a story told in the past. Slipping between the two is one of the commonest ways to lose language marks.
Where should a new paragraph begin? ... we hauled ourselves onto the last ridge and sat down to rest. Meanwhile, back at the campsite, my father had discovered that the tent poles were still in the car.
Answer: At "Meanwhile, back at the campsite"
A paragraph breaks when the place, the time or the person changes. Meanwhile, back at the campsite changes all three at once.
Which ending finishes the story properly?
Answer: I still keep the ticket stub in my pencil case, though the ink has almost worn away.
A small object that has lasted lets the reader feel the time that has passed, without the writer having to claim anything about it.
Replace the marked verb with one stronger word. The old man [walked] slowly up the steps, holding the railing with both hands.
Answer: shuffled
A verb like shuffled carries the slowness by itself, so the sentence no longer needs the word slowly to prop it up.
Write one word for the blank. I had checked my bag twice before leaving. ______ , the recorder was still on my desk at home.
Answer: However
The second sentence goes against what the first leads you to expect, and However is the word that marks that turn.
Replace the marked word with one more exact word. The [thing] we used to prise the lid off was my father's screwdriver.
Answer: tool
Tool says what kind of thing it was without repeating the word screwdriver, which the sentence is saving for its ending.