Your friends once played a harmless prank on you. Give an account of what happened, your response to the prank and what you learnt from the experience.

MODEL ANSWER (approximately 320 words)

THE SLIPS IN MY BAG

It began, as these things do, with a folded slip of paper.

I found the first one in my geometry box during the second period, in handwriting I did not recognise: "Meet me behind the science block." There was no name. I put it in my pocket and forgot about it until lunch, when a second slip fell out of my tiffin, and a third, later that afternoon, out of my hair.

By then I was thoroughly rattled. Somebody was leaving these where only a person standing beside me could have left them, and the thought of being watched all day made the back of my neck prickle. When a fourth slip appeared in my library book, I did what I now think was the only sensible thing. I took all four to the Principal.

Her response was not what I expected. She read them, looked up, and asked me who sat nearest my desk.

What followed was miserable. Four of my classmates were called in. I watched them go pale in the corridor and realised, with a lurch, that the handwriting on the second slip was Ritu’s, disguised. They admitted everything at once: a prank, planned over a week, meant to end that evening with all of them jumping out and laughing. They had not imagined I would be frightened. They had certainly not imagined the Principal.

She asked what punishment I thought appropriate. Every face turned towards me.

I said I did not want any. I said it fast, before I could reconsider, and I remember Ritu’s expression more clearly than anything else that year.

What I learnt was not the obvious lesson about pranks. It was this: that I had been given a small, unexpected power over four people, and that what I did with it in that one minute would decide what those four people were to me for the rest of school. We are still friends. I am fairly certain we would not have been.

HOW TO HANDLE THE THREE-PART PERSONAL ACCOUNT

Read the question closely — it names THREE things, and all three must appear or content marks are lost:

1. What happened (the prank itself)
2. Your response to it
3. What you learnt from the experience

Budget roughly half your words to the first, a quarter to the second, and a quarter to the third. Candidates routinely spend 280 words on the prank and two lines on the lesson, which loses marks.

Two cautions specific to this type: The word HARMLESS is in the question. A prank that causes real injury or damage does not answer it. The lesson must be EARNED by the story, not tacked on. A closing line such as "So I learnt that we should never play pranks" is weak; a lesson that could only have come from this particular incident is strong.

Use the first person throughout and keep the tense consistent.

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.