11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi all,

Does CEM questions contains punctuation correction? All the English (shop bought) test papers have some kind punctuation correction questions. My DS pretty bad and he gets frustrated. I never seen these kind of questions in CEM test, so should I just avoid them?

Gameon.....

So far it seems not. But past papers are not necessarily an indication of future questions. CEM like to change things about. Punctuation is an important life skill. There's a big difference between 'Eats, shoots and leaves' and 'Eats shoots and leaves'....

I don't really understand how you can be bad at punctuation? It just follows a set of rules. Really a lot easier than some maths topics. What is it he finds hard?

Yes, it is simple, but he seem to miss it.
When there is no mistake in the sentence, he tries to finds them and gets it wrong. When writing them he is fine, but when it comes to identifying them, he struggles.

Similar here. Yes it's conceptually easy and she understands it - but doing it herself or spotting errors she is not 100% accurate - quite hit and miss.

I think that one of the things she needs to do is to look at it differently - e.g. look for lists, possessives, questions, subordinate clauses, speech, new sentences etc etc - then consider what the punctuation needs to be having found those clues. Just looking directly for the punctuation doesn't always work for her.

Proof reading is a skill, quite different from adding your own punctuation in your own writing. I found the best way is to try and get into the mind set that you are writing it yourself, to begin this technique even try re-writing the line from scratch, but obviously this would be too slow in a test.

Even if proof reading does not occur in any 11+ tests it is good practise for the year six curriculum, and good practise for checking their own English work in the future, or spotting nasty errors on word docs. (Ha ha..I wish..I can live in hope)

You just ended with a bracket!

I also had lots of dots ........see.....informal text

What is that large yellow full stop you have used?

Good advice here, thanks to you all, and indeed he will need them for rest of his life.