G'day fine people. Hope you're feeling all chipper and dandy. This week I'd like to talk about nanotechnology but I won't because that has nothing to do with the 11 plus. What I will talk about is the best and most efficient way to prepare for 11 plus verbal reasoning exams.

Rule number one: don't just jump straight into doing practice papers. Obviously you will have to introduce practice papers at some point but first realise this. In the UK, most verbal reasoning tests contain the same types of questions each year. The trick to learning most efficiently is to understand how to tackle each of the question types and, most importantly of all, be aware of all the different variations that could possibly appear.

Let me explain what I mean by variations of question types...

Take type 15 for example

Here is a bog-standard run-of-the-mill type 15 question

pip is to (squeak, orange, red)
as stone is to (plumb, pebble, plum)

It's all about the meaning of the words. An orange contains a pip and a plum contains a stone. So now you are thinking 'Yep, easy, next question type please!'. But hold on there sunshine. Did you know that the following variation could appear?

as stop is to (pots, street, watch)

In case you can't solve it, the answer is Star is to rats as stop is to pots.  Star is rats backwards and stop is pots backwards. 

So you can see that even within the same question type there are lots of ways the examiner could try to catch you out.

If you just start doing practice papers you may not encounter many of these question variations. It's not nice to realise during the exam that you have never encountered the question in front of you! This is why you should first become aware of as many question variations as possible. Luckily we are here to help. We have made instructional videos for the the 21 verbal reasoning question types which tend to appear each year in exams across the country. For each type we expain the basic method and the variations you may encounter.

Watch the videos

Once you have a good understanding of each of the question types you'll need some practice questions to try out your skills. This is where you might think to dive into practice papers. Hold your horses (or maybe just horse - there is a recession I suppose). Most sample 11 plus practice papers do not contain all of the question types and variations so doing normal practice papers will not give you well-rounded practice. This is where the Chuckra Verbal Reasoning Practice Book 1 comes into play. Inside, you will find 11 plus questions broken down into the individual types. At the end of the book there are 2 special full length papers. The papers are special because they each contain all of the 21 verbal reasoning question types making them a good indicator of ability.

Chuckra Verbal Reasoning Practice Book 1

If you want an easy way of getting all the resources I have spoken about above as well as 11 plus playing cards and our 2008 mock test papers we recommend our Verbal Reasoning Super Bundle.

Verbal Reasoning Super Bundle