e-papers and beyond?

Eleven Plus (11+) in Buckinghamshire (Bucks)

Moderators: Section Moderators, Forum Moderators

11 Plus Mocks - Practise the real exam experience - Book Now
nikki

e-papers and beyond?

Post by nikki »

My son has been working through the e-papers downloaded from this site, he has been scoring from 69 upto 74, he is finishing some with 8 minutes to spare others he just about completes, seems to have most of the techniques sorted making the odd vocab slip up and odd silly mistake.
I now have two queries
1. How realistic are the e-papaers to the real thing, i.e are they of the same standard of difficulty? and
2.What should we be doing now, I'm concenred that he is quite borderline but am not sure what we can do to improve .

He is yet to do any practice papers at school, so far all they have done is some (limited) technique practice,

Any tips gratefully recieved, have found this site very helpful!
patricia
Posts: 2803
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:07 pm

Post by patricia »

Dear Nikki

With only 2/3 weeks to go you should be now completing the NFER papers, practice in the same format.

Shop bought NFER have 6 types of question missing, these are HIKNOS .as identified by IPS, you should ensure these types are still practiced while completing NFER.

Patricia
Nikki

Post by Nikki »

thanks very much Patricia, that is helpful, just a couple more queries.
Is there just one pack of NFER verbal reasoning practice papers available to buy?
How often would you reccomend doing the papers?
and is it still worth working on vocab and maths skills at this stage?
Many thanks again, it is great to have you as a resource a this rather stressful time!
Nikki
Mike Edwards

Post by Mike Edwards »

Hi Patricia

Can you explain why it is recommended to use NFER shop bought papers for Bucks?

They contain 85 questions and only cover 15 question types and there are only four of them available.

How does that compare to the real tests of 80 questions in 50 minutes covering 21 question types?

How can a student complete an NFER paper and practice HIKNOS outside the structure of a test and expect to get a reasonably accurate estimate of their ability?

Regards

Mike
patricia
Posts: 2803
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:07 pm

Post by patricia »

Dear Mike

Have yet to find a publisher that exactly replicates NFER. Therefore NFER are used to practice in EXACTLY the same format ie. question booklet and answer sheet.

Yes they only contain 15 types, so we have to make most of a 'bad' job. ie. while completing these tests the child MUST practice HIKNOS, by using IPS

When I use NFER for my students, I always cross off the last 5, so as to keep it within the confines of the Bucks test and of course practice HIKNOS.

Patricia
Nou
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 12:55 pm

Another reason to use NFER?

Post by Nou »

I arranged for my daughter to sit a mock exam recently at a test centre which used the VR NFER. These papers have the questions arranged in two vertical columns on each page. Distracted for a moment, she completely missed out a whole column i.e. seven questions. She got 76% - if she had answered the missed questions she would have scored up to 90%. Assuming that the real exam paper is laid out in the same way, at least she knows to double check that she has answered all the questions.
Nikki

Post by Nikki »

the e-papers are also layed out like this, so hopefully my son will find the nfer papers quite familiar, we have cetainly found them very useful. I do find it quite odd that nfer set the papers but don't provide practice papers that cover all the question types??
Nou
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 12:55 pm

Post by Nou »

We have also used the e-papers downloaded from the site, but the typeface and the layout are a bit different. The e-papers seem to have a bigger and bolder typeface, or maybe it is just my old printer....
In my case it is important to get my daughter as familiar as possible with the real papers, as she is prone to silly mistakes. She is now scoring over 90% most of the time but of the mistakes she makes, at least 1/2 are the result of missing questions or ticking the wrong box although she has found the right answer!

We found the IPS books and papers excellent both for learning the technique and practising. We also use CD rom 1 & 3 which has really helped my daughter speed up.

With regard to your earlier posting, it is definitely worth practising maths - my daughter really improved in maths type questions in just a week or so - originally she was getting about half wrong - now she normally gets 100% for those sections. I think vocabulary is more difficult to learn quickly but it is worth looking at the lists in the TIPS section if you haven't already done so and doing what you can in the time available.

Good luck for your son!
patricia
Posts: 2803
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:07 pm

Post by patricia »

Dear Nikki and Nou

The question sheets of The Tutors E papers are almost identical in style to NFER.....however the Answer sheet, although similar is not close enough in style to NFER and S.Daughtrey.[Bright Sparks]

Hence I order them for practice..

E papers

S. Daughtrey [ Bright Sparks]

Nfer

Nou, your experience with the mock exam proves the point that the child needs to practice in the same/similar format.

Nikki. it's always worth practising the maths skills. the maths component of the test is relatively easy, the quicker your child can be at these questions, the more time for 'difficult' vocab. Keep reading out aloud, play scrabble, use more words in your everyday language.

A little every day, plus the tests under test conditions.

Patricia
Mike Edwards

Post by Mike Edwards »

Hi

The Tutors e-papers are the same as The Tutors published papers. However, due to the formatting of the e-papers by elevenplusexams there is a slight variation in the answer sheets.

The published papers are as close to NFER that we could get without breaking copyright rules. But the e-papers are half the price of the published papers because of reduced publishing costs.

When we sat down to write the papers we felt it was important to get the format and content correct, particularly with the overlap of question types across two papers. We were grateful to Patricia for providing us with some "inside knowledge" relating to the Bucks tests.

Regards

Mike
Post Reply