English Composition (Free Writing)
English Composition (Free Writing) asks you to produce a short, coherent text in English under specific conditions. In the Iwate entrance exam, the prompt normally gives a situation, an audience, a purpose, and required content points, plus a word limit. You are not being asked for a literary essay; you are being asked to communicate clearly with controlled grammar and to satisfy every condition.
Plan before you write
- Underline the situation, audience, and purpose: email to a friend, notice for club members, opinion for a class.
- List the required content points. If the prompt says 'include two activities and one reason,' count them off.
- Choose sentence patterns you can control: SV, SVO, SVC, there is/are, because, when, if.
- Write one idea per sentence and connect with and, but, because, so, for example.
- Leave time to check tense, third-person -s, articles, plurals, spelling, and word count.
Worked example
Prompt: 'Your Australian friend asks about your favorite school event. Write 25–35 words. Include the event and one reason.' Sample: 'My favorite school event is the sports festival. I like it because all my classmates work together and cheer for each other. We practice for weeks.' This is 27 words. It names the event, gives a reason with because, uses present tense for a general fact, and stays inside the limit. The reason is specific enough to answer why.
Traps
- Missing one required point; examiners count content, not just grammar.
- Writing far over the limit and losing accuracy.
- Japanese-style literal phrases such as 'I was enjoyable.'
- Unclear pronoun reference: 'it' with no clear noun.
- Adding a long relative clause you cannot control; a clean short sentence scores better.