11 Plus Exams Forum

Hello All,

I am new to 11+ system and have a son in year 5 who will sit test next July in Midlands.

He is quite OK with Maths, Level 5 or so. But not so good with English. I guess most questions will be on English Vocabularies.

I am having difficulty how to teach vocabulary, synonyms and antonyms. He does read books like Roald Dahl and Harry Potter, but does not seem to learn much vocabulary though.

Can anyone help? Is there any list of words that should be learnt at this age?

Also what sort of questions normally in NVR?

Please help!

Hi.
We used this first word list and I also found the second link when I was looking for the first one for somebody on this forum yesterday. We didn't use it but it looks good.
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/assets ... tricia.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... 70&t=38525" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I also found that reading to my daughter was a good way of improving vocabulary as I could read more challenging books than she would read on her own. We made a list of unfamiliar words that came up while we were reading and wrote down their meanings.

We mainly used the Bond books for NVR questions.

Great advice from Green Girl - we did exactly that. We also worked through a small, cheapish book called Synonyms and Antonyms by Christine Draper (one exercise a day). Although it starts off fairly simply, it gets them into thinking in terms of same/opposite words, which my ds didn't seem to have done much of at school. DS already had a fairly good vocabulary, but in the test they need to come up with the words in seconds, so the more quickfire practice, the better. I know this sounds weird and horribly geeky, but we sometimes used to do 'synonym talk' in the car, e.g. 'I'm incredulous that you're mislaid your school garment again!' instead of 'I can't believe you've lost your school jumper again'. It drove my 7-year-old up the wall.

For NVR I would recommend the CGP CEM books, though the 3D questions don't seem to come up every year. My DS enjoyed doing those, though (probably something to do with Minecraft).

Hi Wise,

welcome to the forum!

WISE wrote: He does read books like Roald Dahl and Harry Potter, but does not seem to learn much vocabulary though.

Here is a reading suggestion list which could help your child to diversify the authors:
https://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/advic ... ading-list" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The thread on exams contents can help you to see the level of vocabulary the children are expected to be familiar with:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... 11&t=14423" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is usually considered useful to read some classics besides the more modern authors...

Enjoy the prep; it is an occasion to share many moments with your DC

Thanks very much greengirl, gingerly and jane eyre!

Don't forget that for Durham CEM verbal, the answers have to be precise in meaning. So for example they may be asked to identify the synonym for ROBBERY - from the list of THIEF, HEIST, SHOPLIFTER, FRAUDSTER. The correct answer being HEIST as the others are people who commit crimes not an actual crime.

Yes, I agree precision is really important. Sorry about my sloppy example above: 'garment' would obviously not be a correct synonym for 'jumper' in a range of choices including 'attire', 'sweater' and 'woolly'! Although grammar isn't explicitly tested, I found it very helpful with my DS to check over parts of speech again and again, encouraging him to ask himself 'Do I need a noun / verb / adjective... here?' (once I was sure he knew what they were...). This also helps enormously with tackling the shuffled sentence-type questions - being able to spot the main verb quickly, for example, and which noun/pronoun it's likely to go with.