NSSCAS English First Language 8167 common mistakes
NSSCAS English First Language 8167 · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing a summary that lifts whole sentences from the passage and stitches them together with connectives, rather than recasting the content in the candidate's own words.
Under time pressure, copying feels faster and safer than reformulating, and candidates assume that keeping the original wording guarantees accuracy. Markers penalise copied strings and reward compressed, reworded points, so the habit silently caps the mark.
What to do instead
Practise a two-pass method: first underline only the relevant points, then close the passage and write each point from memory in a single short clause. Limit each point to about ten words, and check that no four consecutive words match the source.
Treating summary as commentary: adding opinions, examples from personal experience, or evaluative adjectives such as 'shocking' and 'unfair' that do not appear in the passage.
Candidates confuse summary with directed writing and assume that a lively response scores better, or they misread the instruction and think evaluation is wanted.
What to do instead
Before writing, circle the exact instruction verb (summarise, explain, describe) and the content points it names. Draft the summary, then delete any sentence that could not be justified by pointing to a line in the passage.
Answering comprehension questions with unsupported general impressions ('the writer seems sad about the town') instead of quoting or closely paraphrasing the specific words that create the effect.
Candidates respond to atmosphere rather than to language, and they have not been trained to move from a quotation to a named technique to an explanation of effect.
What to do instead
Use a three-part answer frame for every language question: quote the exact words, name the device (for example simile, juxtaposition, short sentence, verb choice), then state what the reader now thinks or feels. If a step is missing, rewrite the answer.
Writing directed writing in the wrong register: a letter to a head teacher that opens 'Hey, what's up' or an article for teenagers written in formal Latinate prose with no direct address.
Candidates write in their default voice and ignore the audience and purpose stated in the prompt, or they believe 'good English' always means formal English.
What to do instead
Before drafting, write a one-line brief: audience, purpose, form, and three register markers (for example contractions, direct address, modal verbs, formal connectives). Check the finished piece against that brief and adjust the opening and closing paragraphs, where register is most visible.
Producing a directed writing piece with the surface features of the form but none of its function: a speech with no rhetorical address to the audience, an article with no headline or subheadings, a letter with no clear purpose statement in the first paragraph.
Candidates memorise layout conventions but not the communicative job each convention performs, so the writing looks correct but does not persuade, inform, or argue as required.
What to do instead
For each form, learn two or three functional moves and practise them explicitly: a speech needs direct address, a rhetorical question, and a call to action; an article needs a headline, an engaging opening, and grouped paragraphs. Annotate a model answer to identify where each move occurs.
Narrative writing that spends most of the word count on build-up and then resolves the plot in one sentence ('Then everything changed and it was fine'), leaving no time for the climax and its consequences.
Candidates plan by events rather than by structure, so they do not allocate words to the part of the story that carries the marks, and they run out of time or ideas.
What to do instead
Plan with a five-part skeleton and assign a rough word budget to each part: orientation, rising tension, climax, falling action, resolution. Start the story close to the moment of change, and write the climax as a slowed-down scene with sensory detail rather than as summary.
Descriptive writing built entirely from a list of visual adjectives ('the beautiful blue sky, the green grass, the tall trees') with no movement, sound, smell, or point of view.
Candidates equate description with piling up adjectives and have not practised selecting a viewpoint or structuring a description by time or space.
What to do instead
Choose a fixed viewpoint and an organising principle (moving through space, or a sequence of moments). Include at least three sense channels and one deliberate structural shift, such as zooming from a wide view to a single object. Cut adjectives that do not add information.
Argumentative writing that asserts a position repeatedly without developing reasons, evidence, or a counterargument, so the essay is a list of claims rather than an argument.
Candidates mistake strong opinion for persuasive structure and have not been taught to build a line of reasoning with concession and rebuttal.
What to do instead
Plan one paragraph per reason using point, evidence, explanation, link. Include a paragraph that concedes the strongest opposing view and then rebuts it. Underline your thesis in the introduction and check that every paragraph connects back to it.
Losing marks on sentence boundaries: comma splices, run-on sentences, and fragments, alongside inconsistent tense and unmarked shifts between past and present.
Candidates punctuate by ear and by pause length rather than by grammatical structure, and they edit only for spelling when checking work.
What to do instead
Do a dedicated proofreading pass that ignores meaning and reads only sentence boundaries: for each full stop, ask whether the words on either side are independent clauses. Learn the three legal ways to join clauses (full stop, semicolon, comma plus conjunction) and practise identifying splices in your own drafts.
Using ambitious vocabulary inaccurately or repeating the same intensifiers and connectives ('very', 'really', 'a lot', 'also', 'basically') throughout, producing writing that is either wrong or flat.
Candidates believe long or unusual words earn credit and have not learned that precision and variety matter more than difficulty, so they guess at meanings and fall back on a small set of filler words.
What to do instead
Keep a personal vocabulary log of words met in reading, recording the word, its exact meaning, and one original sentence. In each piece, replace every intensifier with a more precise verb or adjective, and vary connectives deliberately rather than reaching for the same three.
Writing about what happens in a text without analysing how the writer makes the reader respond, so answers describe content and never discuss structure, sentence length, imagery, or tone.
Candidates read for plot and treat analysis as retelling, and they lack a vocabulary for naming structural and stylistic choices.
What to do instead
Build a short checklist of features to scan for (sentence length, punctuation for effect, imagery, contrast, repetition, narrative voice) and apply it to every passage. For each feature found, write one sentence linking the choice to a specific effect on the reader.