HELP NFER school practice test different and a disaster

blissot · Post by **blissot** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:07 pm

Can anyone help my daughter has come home in tears after her practice VR test today. She said that it was different to what she had done on the NFER practice papers, she said it included lots of code questions she hadn't done before with a combination of both the alphabet and numbers. She also said no alphabet was printed so she wrote one out but didn't know how to work it out with the numbers, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:14 pm

Hi Blissot

Don´t panic.

The NFER practice papers contain 15 types of questions.

The NFER familiarization packs and the tests in a lot of LEAs contain 21 question types.

Have a look at question types 16-21 on the free download from The Tutors CD1 and ask your daughter if these are the same type of questions, they probably are.

Regards

Mike

blissot · Post by **blissot** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:38 pm

Thanks for your response I have had a look on the demo and she has told me that it was like the word letter codes question type number 3 on the cd demo but that the codes also included numbers.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:55 pm

Hi Blissot

Ask her to look at the type 19 "word number codes" which are not on the practice papers.

Regards

Mike

blissot · Post by **blissot** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:19 pm

Hi Mike the codes and words to work out in my daughters test today was a code which was a combination of letters and numbers and looked something like this:- a1h7d9g20. They then they had to try and work out a word and the same vice versa given the word and then have to work out the code for it. I think I have worked it out now as they have to work out what the alphabet code is then the number code which i presume is the position of the letter in the alphabet. I haven't seen these type of questions before is there any books or software which can help with this. Many Thanks

PS any tips for increasing speed in tests?

Alex · Post by **Alex** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 10:11 pm

Hi,

These types of question were in the practice test last year as well, but no mixed number and letter codes came up in the real test. Susan Daughtrey covers this question type in one of the 4 Verbal Reasoning Technique and Practice books. They are not as hard as they first appear as was pointed out last year:

Hi,

My son did the practice tests at the grammar school yesterday. In the VR test he said there were some question types which are not covered in the NFER published papers nor in the IPS papers (inclding HIKNOS).

One consisted of fitting given letters into a 3x3 grid so that certain words were spelt out and a valid word was made in every direction. Another was a code type question but using both letters and numbers in the code (and no alphabet printed above to help).

He says the word grid was easy but he found the codes difficult and got half of them wrong.

Does anyone know of any published papers which include these types of question?

The NVR test appeared to follow the exact format of the published NFER NVR papers (standard format).

Sara

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Dear Sara

Surprised that no alphabet was given......Its something a child needs to be told...if no alphabet....write one out quickly.

The codes you describe are relatively easy....the numbers are the positions of the alphabet.eg C=3.....M=13.....T=20.

Sometimes its one number forward or backwards eg C=4 or 2....M=14 or 12.....T=21 or 19

So the word EXAMPLE could be written F24B13Q12F.....All letters have moved forward 1, All numbers are their position in the alphabet.

Any questions just ask

Patricia

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