If you were granted a special wish what would you choose? Say why you would make this choice and how it will be useful to you and your loved ones.

MODEL ANSWER (approximately 330 words)

THE WISH I WOULD MAKE

If I were granted one wish, I would ask to be able to give my grandmother back the use of her right hand.

This is a smaller wish than the ones people usually name, and I have thought about that. I could ask for world peace, or for an end to poverty, and I am aware that those are the correct answers. But a wish that enormous is really a way of avoiding the question, because nobody can picture it. I can picture this one exactly.

My grandmother had a stroke in March of last year. She recovered a great deal — she walks, she talks, she is entirely herself — but the right hand did not come back. It lies in her lap. She was a tailor for thirty-one years and made every garment my mother wore to school, and she has not held a needle since.

Why I would choose it is not only that it would end a hardship, though it would. It is that the loss took away something more particular than a hand. She used to sit by the window in the afternoons and work, and people from the lane would come and sit with her while she did it, and the conversation happened around the work. Now she sits by the window and there is nothing in her lap, and fewer people come, because there is no longer a reason to.

How it would be useful is easy to say for her and harder to say for me. She would sew again, and earn a little, and refuse to admit that either mattered. For my mother it would end a guilt she carries without grounds. And for me — I would like her to teach me. I asked her in January and she looked at her hand and said nothing, and I have not asked since.

That is the wish. Not a better world. One window, one afternoon, one pair of hands doing what they know how to do.

WHAT THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES

THREE tasks, and content marks are counted against all three:

1. WHAT you would wish for
2. WHY you would make this choice
3. HOW it would be useful to you AND your loved ones

Note the third carefully — it names two beneficiaries, so the answer must cover both yourself and others.

A STRATEGIC POINT. The instinctive wishes — world peace, no poverty, unlimited money — are written by most candidates and are very hard to develop for 350 words, because nobody can give concrete detail about them. A SMALL, SPECIFIC wish lets you answer all three parts precisely, and precision is what the content mark rewards. Notice that the model acknowledges this choice openly in its second paragraph rather than hoping the examiner will not notice.

This is a reflective composition, so first person is correct and the tone should be personal rather than formal. FORMAT AND MARKS DIVISION: see "Composition — grade bands and marking" in the Writing Formats & Marking (Reference) chapter, along with the worked model for this composition type.

USE THIS AS A MODEL, NOT AS AN ANSWER TO MEMORISE. The question asks for an ORIGINAL composition, and every year examiners identify scripts reproduced from guide books; a memorised answer can be penalised for plagiarism and will in any case read as borrowed. Study this piece for its STRUCTURE — how it opens, how the paragraphs are ordered, where the required tasks are answered, how it ends — and then write your own, about your own school, your own family, your own town. Your own specific detail is worth more marks than anyone else’s polished sentence.