13Plus-level Practice Paper 2
Fiction
Reading Section: 45 marks available.
Writing Section: 25 marks available.
70 marks available in total.
You are advised to read through the source in its entirety first, and then refer back to it when
necessary as you answer the questions.
Be sure to plan your longer answers, especially in the writing section.
Also make sure you leave time to proofread your answers.
This is the intellectual property of Ross Turner Academics
© Ross Turner 2023 | www.rossturneracademics.com
, READING SECTION
Source
Read the passage below, and then answer questions 1-8.
Monster
1 Driving along the country road that night was like driving down into a deep well. The sky was
2 dark, but the hedgerows rose up on either side of the car like impenetrable barricades, pitch
3 black walls either side of me, narrowing and widening as I ate away at the winding miles. My
4 car’s headlights cut into the gloom, two thin, yellow beams, sickly against the blackness. I
5 skipped the next song on Spotify, and instead Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights came on, and
6 she sang about windy moors and jealousy and Heathcliff.
7 Every half a mile or so, a shape would dart across the road ahead of me, as if some wild
8 animal were following me, hunting me, crisscrossing my path. Rabbits crouched in the bases
9 of hedgerows, waiting to dash between the car’s wheels. Owls swooped low across the road on
10 silent wings, chasing some unseen prey in the fields either side of me. Deer bounded over the
11 hedgerows and cleared the road in single leaps, elegant and powerful. At one point, flashing
12 round a corner in my pale headlights, a badger lumbered out from a particularly dense shadow,
13 all muscled and vicious. Then, as I climbed the rise of a hill, and my wan headlights crept out
14 across the far horizon, the sky slightly lighter than the hills, I saw the thick knot of blackness
15 creeping towards me.
16 My lights swept across the horizon, from right to left, across the tops of distant hills, as
17 the road meandered. The shape seemed static, but I knew it wasn’t; like a tornado – they never
18 stop moving, I’d heard, so if one seems like it’s standing still, there’s a 50% chance it’s coming
19 right for you. This wasn’t a tornado, but I knew which direction it was moving. The pinch in
20 my stomach, and the fist in my chest, both told me so.
21 For a moment, the sky brightened, as the sea of clouds shifted and revealed a spattering
22 of tinkling stars, a sliver of silver moon like a stairway to space. It illuminated the shape in the
23 distance, only now it was much closer.
24 The hulking monstrosity ploughed towards me, barely a mile away, though the distance
25 was hard to judge in the darkness. It was huge and square against the sky, and seemed to suck
26 in all the moon’s colour, like a black hole.
27 Kate Bush was still singing, but I began to hear a low rumbling, a distant roar, growing
28 louder by the second. The clouds crowded back in, gleefully stealing away the light, and the
29 landscape was thrown into darkness again. I gripped the steering wheel tighter. The pinch in
30 my stomach pulled harder. And the fist in my chest clenched and unclenched faster.
31 Suddenly, a Passing Place sign flashed in my headlights, and I saw the half-crescent
32 curve of tarmac to the lefthand side of the road up ahead, and the looming black shape just
33 beyond it, on the same stretch of road as me now.
34 I slammed on the brakes and swerved across into the passing place.
35 At the same time, a dozen blinding white lights burst on in front of me – three rows of
36 them, across the enormous face of the shape.
This is the intellectual property of Ross Turner Academics
© Ross Turner 2023 | www.rossturneracademics.com
Fiction
Reading Section: 45 marks available.
Writing Section: 25 marks available.
70 marks available in total.
You are advised to read through the source in its entirety first, and then refer back to it when
necessary as you answer the questions.
Be sure to plan your longer answers, especially in the writing section.
Also make sure you leave time to proofread your answers.
This is the intellectual property of Ross Turner Academics
© Ross Turner 2023 | www.rossturneracademics.com
, READING SECTION
Source
Read the passage below, and then answer questions 1-8.
Monster
1 Driving along the country road that night was like driving down into a deep well. The sky was
2 dark, but the hedgerows rose up on either side of the car like impenetrable barricades, pitch
3 black walls either side of me, narrowing and widening as I ate away at the winding miles. My
4 car’s headlights cut into the gloom, two thin, yellow beams, sickly against the blackness. I
5 skipped the next song on Spotify, and instead Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights came on, and
6 she sang about windy moors and jealousy and Heathcliff.
7 Every half a mile or so, a shape would dart across the road ahead of me, as if some wild
8 animal were following me, hunting me, crisscrossing my path. Rabbits crouched in the bases
9 of hedgerows, waiting to dash between the car’s wheels. Owls swooped low across the road on
10 silent wings, chasing some unseen prey in the fields either side of me. Deer bounded over the
11 hedgerows and cleared the road in single leaps, elegant and powerful. At one point, flashing
12 round a corner in my pale headlights, a badger lumbered out from a particularly dense shadow,
13 all muscled and vicious. Then, as I climbed the rise of a hill, and my wan headlights crept out
14 across the far horizon, the sky slightly lighter than the hills, I saw the thick knot of blackness
15 creeping towards me.
16 My lights swept across the horizon, from right to left, across the tops of distant hills, as
17 the road meandered. The shape seemed static, but I knew it wasn’t; like a tornado – they never
18 stop moving, I’d heard, so if one seems like it’s standing still, there’s a 50% chance it’s coming
19 right for you. This wasn’t a tornado, but I knew which direction it was moving. The pinch in
20 my stomach, and the fist in my chest, both told me so.
21 For a moment, the sky brightened, as the sea of clouds shifted and revealed a spattering
22 of tinkling stars, a sliver of silver moon like a stairway to space. It illuminated the shape in the
23 distance, only now it was much closer.
24 The hulking monstrosity ploughed towards me, barely a mile away, though the distance
25 was hard to judge in the darkness. It was huge and square against the sky, and seemed to suck
26 in all the moon’s colour, like a black hole.
27 Kate Bush was still singing, but I began to hear a low rumbling, a distant roar, growing
28 louder by the second. The clouds crowded back in, gleefully stealing away the light, and the
29 landscape was thrown into darkness again. I gripped the steering wheel tighter. The pinch in
30 my stomach pulled harder. And the fist in my chest clenched and unclenched faster.
31 Suddenly, a Passing Place sign flashed in my headlights, and I saw the half-crescent
32 curve of tarmac to the lefthand side of the road up ahead, and the looming black shape just
33 beyond it, on the same stretch of road as me now.
34 I slammed on the brakes and swerved across into the passing place.
35 At the same time, a dozen blinding white lights burst on in front of me – three rows of
36 them, across the enormous face of the shape.
This is the intellectual property of Ross Turner Academics
© Ross Turner 2023 | www.rossturneracademics.com
