English · Question types
Question Forge
Three questions, three lines they were forged from. Hammer each pair together.
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.
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Why this works
Three question types, three kinds of line, every single paper. Retrieval comes from a line that states a fact, so you copy it out. Reading between the lines comes from a line that shows without telling, so you read the clue and say what it means. Vocabulary in context comes from a line with one hard word and enough around it to work the word out. When you meet a question, name its type first. The type tells you what sort of line to hunt for and what sort of sentence to write.
Helping a child through Question Forge
Hints, least revealing first
- Start with the easy weld. One question asks for a number, so it can only come from the line that states one.
- A vocabulary question needs a hard word sitting in the line, with clues around it to work the meaning out.
- That leaves reading between the lines, which always comes from the line that shows a person doing something without ever telling you why.
When they finish it: “Forge complete.”
What usually goes wrong here
- Chooses a plausible inference without enough textual evidence.
This is the wrong answer 11+ papers are built to offer, so it is worth watching for directly: a child who does this will look confident and still lose the mark. If it keeps happening on infer implicit meaning, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
3 11+ skills this exercise practises
Each of these has its own page, with a worked example and the mistake that skill attracts.
- Infer implicit meaningDraw one supported conclusion that is not directly stated.
- Interpret a word in contextInfer the meaning of one word from its sentence and passage context.
- Retrieve an explicit detailFind a detail stated directly in a passage.
You 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.
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- Reuse it in your own writing
- 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.
The one thing we ask is a link back to the page you took it from, so a reader can find the live, playable version and the rest of the 11+ skills next to it. That is a request, not a condition: nothing above depends on it.
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One exercise is a start, not a plan
A free diagnostic across all four subjects shows which english skills to practise next, and in what order.