13+ English asks a child to do two things well: read something they have never seen and understand it deeply, and write something of their own, to time, that a stranger will enjoy reading. Everything else — the paper structure, the question wording, the mark scheme — is scaffolding around those two skills. Which is good news, because both skills are trainable, and neither is trainable by cramming.

As with all CE detail, the durable shape below is the thing to plan around; the exact structure of the current papers is worth confirming in ISEB's own materials or with the target school, since syllabuses are revised and schools setting their own 13+ papers vary the format freely.

The reading half: what comprehension actually asks

The reading element presents an unseen passage — prose, and very often poetry as well, which is worth knowing early because poetry is where unprepared candidates panic. The questions then climb a ladder that is remarkably consistent across CE and school-set papers alike:

  1. Retrieval. What happened, who did what, find the word that means X. These marks are for careful reading, and strong candidates treat them as banked.
  2. Inference. What does the character feel, why does she hesitate, what is suggested by the closed door. The answer is not written in the text — it is implied by it, and the child must say what they infer and point to the evidence that supports it.
  3. Language and effect. Why might the writer have chosen "crept" rather than "walked"; what does the simile do. The examiner is not collecting terminology. Naming "personification" earns little; explaining what the personification makes the reader see or feel earns the marks.
  4. Personal response, grounded. Some papers close with a question inviting the child's own view — of a character, of the ending — marked on how well the view is argued from the text, not on which view it is.

Where reading marks go missing

Three patterns account for most of the damage in Year 8 scripts:

  • Answering the easier question. Asked "why does the author describe the house this way?", the child answers "what is the house like?" — retrieval offered where inference was wanted. The fix is teaching the child to identify what kind of question they are facing before answering it.
  • Assertion without evidence. "She is scared" may well be right, and earns little on its own. "She is scared — she 'flinches' at the knock and won't look at the window" earns the marks. Point, evidence, comment: the habit transfers directly to senior-school English.
  • Technique-spotting. A list of devices with no account of their effect. One technique explained beats four named.

Poetry deserves its own sentence: a child who has read and talked about perhaps twenty poems over a year — noticing what a poem does, not annotating it to death — will meet an unseen poem as an interesting puzzle. A child meeting their fourth-ever poem in the exam room will meet it as a threat. The difference is exposure, and it is cheap to buy with time.

The writing half: composition under the clock

The composition element offers a choice of tasks — the mix varies, but the recurring families are narrative ("write a story that begins…"), descriptive ("describe a place that…"), personal ("write about a time you…") and discursive or argumentative ("some people think…; what is your view?"). The child picks one and writes for a fixed period.

Two things about the marking shape everything:

  • Accuracy carries real weight. Spelling, punctuation, grammar and paragraphing are not tie-breakers; they are marked. A vivid story sprayed with comma splices loses to a slightly plainer one that is clean.
  • The reader is a person. Especially at schools marking their own papers, composition is read as a sample of the child — how they think, what they notice, whether they can control a piece of writing. Voice and shape matter more than vocabulary flexing. The child who deploys "cerulean" and "cacophony" in the first paragraph is not fooling anyone.

Where composition marks go missing

  • No plan. The commonest failure by a distance. A child who plunges in produces openings without endings — and an unfinished piece caps its own mark. Three minutes listing beginning, middle and end repays itself every single time.
  • The rehearsed story, retrofitted. Children are sometimes coached to prepare one story and bend any title to it. Markers have read that story many times, and the joins show. Preparing skills — an opening that starts in the action, a paragraph of controlled description, an ending written before the middle if time runs short — beats preparing product.
  • Choosing the flattering task. The discursive option rewards a child who argues well and punishes one who pads; the narrative rewards control and punishes sprawl. Knowing which kind of writer your child is, from practice, is worth more than any general tactic.
  • No proofread. Two saved minutes at the end, spent hunting their own three habitual errors (every child has a personal top three), are the cheapest marks on the paper.

How to practise both halves without deadening either

  • Read widely, and talk about it. The strongest 13+ English candidates are, boringly and reliably, the children who read — because vocabulary, sentence-sense and stamina compound over years. Fifteen minutes of conversation about why the chapter ended there is comprehension practice wearing plain clothes.
  • Little written pieces, often. One timed composition a week from the autumn of Year 8, planned, written, proofread — then read by someone who responds honestly — outperforms a springtime blitz. The response matters as much as the writing: a child improves at writing chiefly by being read.
  • Practise the question ladder. With any decent passage, a parent can ask one retrieval question, one inference question, one language question. The mark-scheme habit — point, evidence, comment — can be built at the kitchen table.
  • Rotate the composition families. A few of each kind, then specialise late in whichever the child does best.

On the tutoring side, a note on where we honestly fit and where we don't: our English tutor works on the reading half's method — probing how, form and why a text works, and walking analytical writing through its structure — and it never writes or rewrites the child's own piece, because their voice is the point and a receiving school can tell. But composition improves chiefly by being read, critically and warmly, by a person — a parent, a teacher, a tutor. That half of 13+ English has no shortcut, and we would rather say so than sell you one.

FAQ

What does 13+ Common Entrance English consist of?

In durable shape: a reading element and a writing element. The reading side presents an unseen passage — prose, and often poetry — with questions moving from retrieval through inference to comment on the writer's language. The writing side offers a choice of composition tasks, typically spanning narrative, descriptive and discursive options. Check the current ISEB materials or the target school for the exact paper structure, which is revised from time to time.

How is 13+ English marked?

Reading answers are marked on understanding and on evidence — whether the child roots the answer in the text rather than in general knowledge or guesswork. Composition is marked on ideas and organisation together with technical accuracy: spelling, punctuation, grammar and paragraphing all carry weight, and schools setting their own papers read the writing as a sample of how the child thinks.

Where do children most often lose marks in 13+ English?

On the reading side: answering retrieval-style when the question wants inference, asserting without quoting, and naming a technique without saying what it does. On the writing side: not planning, running out of time mid-piece, ignoring the actual task in favour of a rehearsed story, and losing easy accuracy marks to unproofread errors.

Can you actually prepare for an unseen passage?

Yes — not by predicting the passage but by training the method: regular close reading of good prose and poetry, the habit of answering with evidence, and practice at the question types. Wide, enjoyable reading remains the single strongest preparation, because vocabulary and stamina are built over years, not weeks.