What does a good writing piece for the NSW selective school test look like?  It has the makings of any good writing piece - that means it’ll have:

This is a question I get asked often.  While the quality of your writing is considered over the quantity, this is my opinion on how long/how many words should be in an essay or a writing piece for a selective school exam or scholarship test.

Writing an essay or writing piece in exam conditions almost always has a time constraints.  The time constraints for the following exams are:

• Victorian Selective School (Melbourne High, MacRob, Suzanne Cory and

Congratulations if you’ve been offered an application to the principal’s discretionary category for a selective school!  They’re very hard to get into and to be offered one means you’ve done well in the exam and may have been offered a spot in another selective school.  If you haven’t

In this post, we’ll go through our top 3 entries for the writing competition and go through what was done well and what needed improvement. I’ll collect them into 5 tips below for how to write a competitive writing piece for the selective and scholarship exams. I’ll

Selective school and scholarship exams have demanding time limits!

Around the 15 - 25 minute mark for a writing piece and around 30 - 40 minutes for a multiple choice test such as mathematics and reading

The Vic Selective School Test is coming up soon on 18 June 2016! This is the main entrance exam to gain entry into the four selective high schools in Victoria being MacRobertson Girls’ High School (MacRob), Melbourne High School (Melb High / Mel High), Suzanne Cory and Nossal.

What are the 3 ingredients to better writing for your exams – NAPLAN, Selective Schools and Scholarships and IELTS?

No. It’s not grammar and spelling exercises. It’s **practice, modeling

Does your child write using a lot of speech?  Speech is when you put something into “speech marks” and it shows that someone is saying something. I see this kind of writing when children start preparations for their selective school or scholarship test.  In fact, sometimes I

In Writing & Reading Club (a weekly writing and reading improvement program), we score essays and provide feedback.

I correct and give feedback to a lot of written expression pieces. Many of the creative writing and argumentative writing pieces are done by students vying for a coveted spot in a selective school or sitting an exam to obtain a hard-to-get scholarship offer.

In this blog post, I answer 5 common questions that students and parents ask about preparing for the written expression or writing task of the selective schools test and/or scholarship tests.

I do a lot of tutoring for selective school and scholarship tests and our online course packages that cover abstract reasoning, verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, reading

The writing test or written expression in a selective entry test is arguably one of the hardest parts of a multi-part test that generally examines reasoning (verbal, numerical), reading and maths.

Practice makes a better writer and with it, your child will ace the Year 7 NAPLAN Persuasive Writing section!

Strong persuasive writing skills will pave the road to success beyond

Writing creative stories is one of the easiest and simplest ways for your child to learn English (and start building their essay writing skills).

I want to tell you the story about Anna [name has been changed to protect privacy].

Like many students who sit a selective or scholarship school test, she

Learn how to ACE your writing test and write better essays by “showing, not telling” with 1000 ready-to-use example sentences created by experts.

“My child struggles to come up with a story and can’t finish a story in the time limit!” “How can my child “show” and not “tell”? “How on earth do we fix up their writing and where do we even start?”

Finally, a simple and easy to use checklist that parents can use (even if you’re not good at writing) to help your child improve their creative writing (narratives) for competitive exams like scholarships, selective school entrance exams, ICAS and NAPLAN.

“My child doesn’t know what to write about!” “What is persuasive writing anyway?” “Where do we even start when preparing to write a persuasive writing piece?!?”

Finally, a simple and easy to use checklist that parents can use (even if you’re not good at writing) to help your child improve their persuasive or argumentative writing for competitive exams like scholarships, selective school entrance exams, ICAS and NAPLAN.

Private school scholarship testing season generally starts from February to April and in scholarship tests, written expression tests how well your child can write:

• based on a specific genre - usually persuasive/argumentative writing or creative/narratives),