English 11+ practice papers

What the English paper is testing

Comprehension, cloze, spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary. Children typically have 50 minutes to complete the paper, working at roughly one question per minute. The most common stumbling block is not topic knowledge — it is timing. Teach your child to triage: if a question takes more than 90 seconds, skip it, mark it, and return at the end.

Region-by-region practice papers

Topic mix you should expect

Across the catalogued English papers, the recurring topic groups are:

• Synonyms and antonyms
• Punctuation — apostrophes
• Comprehension — non-fiction
• Cloze passage
• Word classes
• Comprehension — fiction extract

Use the topic list above to plan revision sprints. A common parent mistake is to revise broadly and shallowly across many topics; far better is to pick three weak topics and drill them to mastery before moving on. The papers below are arranged so you can sit one, identify weaknesses against this list, and revisit two or three topics before the next attempt.