Week 35 · English Practice Paper

Reading Passage

Read the following passage and answer the questions which follow.

The Toy Horse

Peter and Alice set up their stalls side by side on the vicarage lawn long before the fete gates opened, arranging what each had brought with the greatest care. Peter had spent the whole of the spring evenings carving small wooden animals in his father's shed, and Alice had spent hers labelling jars of honey from the three hives at the bottom of her garden. By the middle of the afternoon each young trader watched with quiet pleasure as their stock grew smaller, and the coins in the tins beside them grew heavier.

There remained only one carved animal on Peter's stall — a small chestnut horse, its mane picked out in careful painted streaks — when a lady in a wide straw hat stopped before it. "What a fine little horse," she said, turning it over in her gloved hands. "How much are you asking for him?" Peter hesitated. "He is the last one I have left, but you should know there is a chip in the paint along his back leg, where I knocked him against the workbench," he said, showing her. "So there is," said the lady, examining it. "I think, then, I had better not take him after all. But tell me — is it good business to point out the faults in your own wares?" "It is better than pretending they are not there," said Peter.

"You are quite right, and you will not regret holding to it," the lady said, smiling. "I have nothing else I want this afternoon, but I shall remember your stall the next time the fete comes around. Is this honey your own?" she asked, turning to Alice. "Yes, from our own hives — I helped my father collect it only last week," Alice told her, and having chosen a jar, the lady paid and went on her way among the other stalls.

"Peter, what a strange way to sell a horse — telling her about the chip before she had even noticed it herself!" said Alice, once the lady was out of earshot. "Now you can carry him home again, or throw him in the hedge, for all the good it did you." "I would rather carry him home a dozen times than sell him by keeping quiet about something I knew was wrong with him," Peter replied. "Besides, I do not think I have done so badly out of this afternoon. She will remember my stall long after she has forgotten his chipped leg, and that is worth more to me than the few pence I would have made today."

Option 1: Write a story (or part of a story) with the title 'The Last Bus Home'.

• Decide early on what your title is really going to be about, then build your plot around it.
• A strong ending will make the title feel meaningful, not just decorative.

Option 2: Write a story (or part of a story) that begins with the words: 'The attic door creaked open, and for a moment nobody dared move.'

• Keep the tense, hushed atmosphere going for at least a paragraph before anything happens.
• Use short sentences at moments of high tension.

Option 3: Write a story (or part of a story) with 'Alone' as the title, in which you suddenly realise you are entirely on your own. It may be true or entirely made up, but it should include your thoughts and feelings as well as what happened.

• Balance what happens with how your character feels about it.
• A believable emotional reaction matters as much as an exciting plot.

Option 4: Write a story (true or made up) about a visit you make to a relative you have never met before.

• Use first impressions — of the person, their home, their manner — to bring the visit to life.
• Show how your feelings about the relative change (or don't) by the end.

Option 5: Write a story (or part of a story) about somebody who tells a lie, or says something which is not true although at the time they believe it is. The lie causes all sorts of trouble. What is your main character going to do? Will they own up, or hope nobody remembers they are responsible? What happens?

• Make the consequences of the lie escalate believably, rather than happening all at once.
• A clear decision at the end (own up or not) gives your story a satisfying shape.

Option 6: Write a story (or part of a story) inspired by the following scene: an old upright piano, its lid propped open, discovered in a clearing deep in a wood, its keys damp with dew and sheet music scattered across the grass around it.

• Use the strangeness of the setting (why is a piano here?) to build mystery.
• Sensory detail — the smell of the wood, the damp keys, the silence — will make the scene feel real.