Verbal Reasoning · Putting words into alphabetical order
Dictionary Order
Drag the cards into dictionary order, the order these words would appear in a dictionary.
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Why this works
Alphabetical order is decided letter by letter, left to right, and you stop at the first letter where two words disagree. Here the hardest pair is CAR and CARE: they share CAR and the fourth letter is where they part, which is why CAR comes first. CAR and CARE show the rule children forget. One word is the whole beginning of the other, so there is no letter to compare at the end. The word that runs out first goes first, which is why a dictionary has CAR before CARE and CARE before CAREFUL. The reliable habit is to line the words up under each other and run a finger down the columns, because the eye is very willing to compare the second letters of one pair with the third letters of another.
Helping a child through Dictionary Order
Hints, least revealing first
- Compare two words at a time. Look at their first letters, and only move on to the second letters if the first letters are the same.
- Several of these words start the same way. When that happens, keep sliding right until you find the first letter where they disagree, and decide there.
- CAR and CARE start with exactly the same letters. When one word simply runs out, the shorter word comes first.
When they finish it: “Perfect dictionary order!”
11+ skill this exercise practises
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Dictionary Order practises one skill. Verbal Reasoning has 26 of them
A free diagnostic covers every verbal reasoning skill and the other three subjects, and comes back with a shortlist rather than a list.