Timings for vocab questions

[wizard]

I have picked up some useful information from this site about timings to aim for on the VR code and maths questions.I can't see any timings for the vocab based questions eg compound words, hidden 4 letter word. missing 3 letter word, add a letter etc. Could anyone advise me? I have started timing my son on 6 questions of one type so that we have a baseline to hopefully improve on, but it would be helpful to know what to aim for on the vocab type questions.

many thanks

[Marylou]

I think it depends very much on the child's particular strengths. My DD would whizz through the vocab-type questions as she is good at remembering words out of context, and spend longer on the maths and code questions, whereas DS is the complete opposite! I noticed when DS was doing his last practice test, that he was really struggling with a set of type Es (hidden word) which he usually finds easy. They are - unless you don't recognize the word you are looking for! I think this is why children can sometimes spend a long time on these, puzzling over something that looks straightforward or thrown because they don't recognize a word - when the important thing is to work to a strategy, by eliminating the answers they know it can't be, and/or taking an educated guess, then moving on and getting the rest of them right - hopefully!

I've found that speed tends to come with practice, though it's difficult to set a ballpark figure. I think the often mentioned "20 seconds per question" is very much an average, with some taking much less time than this, and some much more.