English · Proofreading
Error Zapper
Three mistakes are hiding in here. Tap each one to zap it.
Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. What you may do with it, in full.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
Why this works
Proofreading is three separate sweeps, not one hopeful read. Sweep one is capitals and full stops: every sentence has to open with a capital, so "on Saturday" was wrong before you even reached the verb. Sweep two is the sound-alikes, where you test the word by its job: "to" points somewhere, "too" means as well or too much, so "went too the beach" fails the test. Sweep three is spelling, where you slow down on the tricky patterns like i before e. Doing one sweep at a time catches far more than reading the whole thing once and hoping something jumps out.
Helping a child through Error Zapper
Hints, least revealing first
- Start at the very beginning. Something is missing before the first word even gets going.
- One word sounds right but is spelled as its twin. Read the sentence out loud and ask what the word is doing.
- One word simply has its letters in the wrong order. Look for the i and the e.
When they finish it: “All three zapped!”
11+ skill this exercise practises
It has its own page, with a worked example on it.
All english 11+ skillsYou can reuse this. Here is exactly how far that goes
Tutors, teachers and editors keep asking, so this is the answer in writing rather than by email. You do not need to ask permission, and you do not need to tell us.
- Embed it
- Put the exercise inside your own page with the code above. It stays playable, and it keeps working when we improve the engine behind it.
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- Use it in class
- One child or a full set, in a school, in a tutoring session, in a homework club, or at the kitchen table.
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- Quote it, rewrite it, translate it, cut it up, or build something different on top of it. Treat the wording, the worked examples and the question ideas as yours to work with.
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Embed this exercise
Paste this into your own page and the exercise runs there, playable, for your readers or your students. It is 900 pixels tall by default and as wide as the column you put it in; change the height if your layout wants a different one.
The embedded copy has no header, no footer and no sign-up prompt. It records nothing about the child using it, on your page just as on ours.
Error Zapper practises one skill. English has 41 of them
A free diagnostic covers every english skill and the other three subjects, and comes back with a shortlist rather than a list.