The Most Important 11 Plus Skill
The most important skill students can develop in order to increase their chance of gaining entry to their target school is — exam technique.
For the 11 Plus English disciplines, the highest performing students have a very clear strategy for completing their exam paper. They read the words, questions and texts in a specific way. They have a set of exam habits to ensure speed and greatly reduce careless errors. They use a series of memory aids to guide them through delivering what the examiner will award them marks for. To summarise, they already have a good idea of how they will do the exam before they take the real thing. This is exam technique. 💪
Contents:
The Importance Of 11 Plus Technique ✅
We teach specifically for the 11 Plus exam and how to score very highly in it. This means we only focus on what is relevant to the exam and scoring the maximum number of marks. Excellent 11 Plus English exam technique requires breaking a fluid, difficult-to-pin-down, subjective subject such as English, into a series of repeatable steps and processes which can be carried out time and again under exam conditions.
In maths, a student is taught a range of methods to arrive at the solution to a question. This is mainly doable because maths is a subject with a well-defined syllabus, and each question has a limited number of ways it can be solved. The answer is either right or wrong. The exam technique, or how to arrive at the answer in the optimal way, is clearer and more obvious.
Whereas, with English, the borders of the subject are less defined. As a language, it is broad and wide-ranging. As a result, students find it difficult to organise its content in a simplified way ready for an exam. Typically, students are not taught how to navigate a comprehension text efficiently. They’re taught how to read at school, but rarely are they taught how they should be thinking and what they should be doing whilst they are reading. They often don’t know how to construct literary devices from scratch using different methods. Furthermore, verbal reasoning isn’t covered in the required depth for the 11 Plus in schools. All of these factors, combined with the likelihood of there being more than one correct answer to each question, makes 11 Plus English challenging to consistently score highly in.
All of the students taking the 11 Plus exam are highly capable. Exam technique is the difference that makes the difference and decides the small margins between who wins the place and who doesn’t. Therefore, before you start practice papers or online questions, a critical foundation must be laid. Below, we dive into more detail on each English subject area and how 11 Plus exam technique applies.
Comprehension 📚
How your child reads is as important as being able to read. In school, children are rarely taught the steps they should take to ensure they read closely and check for their own understanding. How about knowing where to look in a text? Or finding your way around it with more speed and accuracy? What are your options if you don’t understand something? How can you summarise and simplify a text? All of these vital exam skills are not focussed upon so much in school, yet they give your child the competitive edge in an 11 Plus comprehension exercise.
Writing ✏️
11 Plus Writing can be broken down into two categories: creative and persuasive. In the writing exam, it is most important for the student to target the mark scheme and aim to score marks with every sentence they write. Writing an interesting story is secondary. This can be a tricky concept for an 11 Plus student to grasp because much of the focus in school is put on the basic building blocks: for example, the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, why) in order to help students organise their thoughts. Yes, these are important, but they are also just the basics. The 11 Plus examines students’ writing skills in a far more detailed way than this.
In our experience, it is crucial to lead with the mark scheme when teaching 11 Plus writing. This works so well because it defines a subject that is typically left undefined and children are just told to “describe, use their imagination, or to be creative or persuasive”. All of these blanket terms don’t do much to give the students any clear direction. Instead, a student should practise delivering the skills that are worth marks in the exam. Furthermore, they should be given robust techniques to help them come up with writing that will be awarded marks whilst under timed pressure and answering an unknown question. We give them methods and systems to form phrases and sentences which would score marks in the exam. It’s formulaic, not ‘creative’. Yet this counterintuitive approach is what we’ve found works. We don’t create the next best-selling author; we win the place at your target school.
Verbal Reasoning 🧠
There are over 25 different possible types of verbal reasoning question your child could be asked. Most exam boards or schools choose a select few of them, but there’s nothing to say they cannot include or exclude a question type in any exam year.
Each question type can be done in a number of different ways, though the optimal series of steps are not totally clear from the outset. Having the clear steps for each question can help students keep momentum when a tough question comes along, as well as giving them confidence to increase their speed whilst avoiding any careless mistakes. Knowing the steps to take to complete each question type can really help a student excel in their verbal reasoning exam.
Exam Technique Summary
If we have the correct processes and systems in place from the outset, all that remains is to practise, practise, practise. After all, practice makes it permanent. As adults, we do this in our daily lives, our work, our sports and our hobbies. We seek to find a better way, with more ease, efficiency and effectiveness, in order to deliver improved results. The same applies to the 11 Plus exam; set the right foundation, then build!
This is truly the way the students who win the places at the most competitive grammar and independent schools prepare. This explains how sometimes parents are surprised, after following their local teacher’s advice to not do much preparation or tuition, when their child doesn’t get into their target school. Yes, the child might be naturally bright or at the top of their class. However, there is also a large group of parents who understand that the 11 Plus is not about just brains and talent. It’s about technique, strategy and hard work. This is what we also love about the 11 Plus.
As with anything in life, we can make an impact, we can increase the chances of a positive result, and we have a fair and equal opportunity on exam day to show what we know. Be the hardest worker in the room, focus on what you can control, and then you are capable of anything. This is the way we should be encouraging our children to achieve their goals. It all starts with the 11 Plus. 🌍
