Hello all,

I recently joined the forum and have been reading the information here trying to get my head around the whole 11+ thing. From what I have gathered for VR, practice papers by Susan Daughtrey and Barbara Walsh are very good (and hard) ones to attempt, close to exam ones, etc. My question is: are they suitable for the VR exam for Essex or do they contain more VR types of questions than necessary? I do not want to confuse my son or waste time preparing material he will not have in the exam. I am trying to gather the materials he will need to start 'proper' preparation in September as he is Y4 and at the moment he only does Bond papers which, I thought, will be a gentle start to the real thing a bit later. I looked at the Essex section of the Shop and there are so many materials suggested there. Is there a particular order DS should be attempting them once we cover the 'theory bits' or any order would do?

Many Thanks for your help.

Milada

Hi Milada,

Unfortunately none of us ever get to see the actual VR papers Essex use so difficult to tell. Some of those on here that tutor might be able to provide more guidance, but I would suggest being over prepared is better than under, particularly as Essex seem to change format/focus every few years so you cannot predict what is going to come up.
Also, VR is 50% of the marks and 1 or 2 questions right or wrong can make all the difference in placings.
GL Assessment are also quite good for practise.

Good luck.

Hello,

The VR paper is currently written by GL assessment so will cover the 21 types of questions as listed :

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/advice/verbal-reasoning/gl-assessment-nfer-vr-question-types

The suitable papers according to one of our experts (I have cut and passed this list) are:

21 type VR papers:
In ascending order of difficulty:

IPS
Letts
Learning Labs
Lucky Gecko
Susan Daughtrey
GL Assessment
Walsh

(I seem to think some people have said only some of the Susan Daughtrey are suitable so you may need to be careful there)

The maths and English papers are written by teachers at one of the schools so are a lot more "hit and miss" and certainly have changed significantly recently. The Bond assessment papers are however generally considered useful for maths and English (not VR).

Assuming you are looking at 2014 entry then I would keep a close eye on the CSSE site as when dates changed for this year a sentence appeared that says : (eg 2013 entry) ? does this mean they are planning a change after that?

the SD books 1 - 4 cover around 35+ types so you may not need some of them

The Bright Sparks series by Susan Daughtrey cover the correct question types in multiple choice format.

I would also recommend the Tutors papers, 12 in all, as they follow both timing and format.

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/shop/s ... rch&page=1

Thank you all so very much for your replies, such valuable information.

It seems to me that because the VR is 50% of the mark the focus is mainly on it. I am not able to find many practice papers for Maths or English. I have ordered the previous exam papers from CSSE but I will keep them for practice closer to the exam. Meanwhile I thought I will buy the next Bond for Maths and English.

As Minesatea highlighted, I also spotted the sentence about the not-changed format of test papers 'this year' and am concern what this might mean. Hopefully, if change does occur they will let us know about it well in advance.

Thank you once again for your help. People on this forum are so friendly and supportive.

According to CSSE, most of the questions in the English and Maths paper are already covered within the primary school curriculum. However the VR questions and techniques are not covered within the curriculum and many schools provide no/limited assistance so the onus is on the tutor.

The reality is that for the past two years the English papers require more advanced knowledge than that covered in primary schools. Scores above 60% in the English paper in the last two years would be a good score.

There are plenty of past papers for English and Maths by GL, Letts and Bond. Just make sure you choose the non multiple choice ones, and be warned the English paper in Essex 11+ may be much harder

Thank you, aang, for your recommendations on Maths and English papers. My son has good comprehension and literacy skills but from doing the Bond papers I can see that English will be his weakest subject as his scores are in the lower 80%, while Maths and VR - usually above 90%. Although, he is not working at exam level yet, so I expect a certain drop in performance.