How to write long answers in English without translating from Hindi

Why long answers collapse

Watch a child attempt a five mark question and you will usually see the same pattern. Two strong sentences, then a thinner one, then a sentence that repeats the first, then a stop.

The cause is almost never lack of knowledge. It is that the child began writing before deciding what the whole answer would contain. They are composing and translating at the same time, and the translating wins.

Plan in thirty seconds

Before writing anything, the child writes three words in the margin. Three words, not sentences. These are the three things the answer will say.

They may write these three words in Hindi. That is not a failure, it is efficient. The thinking happens in the thinking language, the writing happens in English. Separating the two is the entire trick.

Point, explain, example

Each of the three plan words becomes a small block of three sentences.

Three blocks of three sentences is nine sentences, which is a full five mark answer. The child never has to judge how much to write. The structure decides it.

A worked example

Sentence starters worth memorising

Ten starters, learned properly, remove most of the hesitation in an exam. Have your child copy these into the front of their English notebook.

• The main reason is that...
• This happened because...
• This means that...
• As a result...
• In the story, the author writes that...
• For example, when...
• Another reason is that...
• On the other hand...
• This shows that...
• Finally, ...

These are not sophisticated. They are not meant to be. They are meant to be available instantly so the child spends their thinking on content rather than on how to begin.

Common mistakes that cost marks

• Retelling the whole story. The examiner has read it. Answer the question asked, with evidence, and stop.
• Drifting tense. Answers about a text are usually written in present tense. Pick one and hold it. Circling the verbs afterwards catches this fast.
• No evidence. An answer with three points and no examples loses roughly half the available marks. The example sentence is not optional.
• Writing until the space runs out. Length is not the target. Three complete blocks beat a full page of repetition.

For Class 6 specifically, the writing section is where most of the marks sit. Our CBSE Class 6 grammar guide shows the full weighting.

If your child can say the answer aloud but not write it, the problem is upstream of this post. Start with the four-step method in my child knows the answer in Hindi but cannot write it in English, then come back here.