After years of teaching 11+ English preparation, certain mistakes come up again and again — in the comprehension, in the writing, in how students manage their time. The good news is that predictable mistakes are avoidable mistakes. Here are the most common ones and what to do about them.
Comprehension: Answering Without Evidence
The most common comprehension error: stating an inference or interpretation without backing it up with evidence from the text. “The character feels scared” is worth almost nothing as an answer. “The character feels scared — the text says her hands ‘wouldn’t stop shaking’” is a complete answer that earns the mark.
Teach your child this habit: every answer to an inference or analysis question needs a quotation. Find it, use it, explain it briefly. This three-step pattern (point — evidence — explanation) is the backbone of almost every English mark scheme at every level, and building the habit at 11+ pays dividends all the way through A-Level.
Comprehension: Not Reading the Question Carefully Enough
Many marks are lost not because a student can’t answer a question, but because they answer the wrong question — a question that’s similar to but subtly different from what was actually asked. A question asking “how does the writer create tension?” is not the same as “what happens in this paragraph?” A question asking for two examples expects exactly two, not one or three.
Slow down at the question. Underline the key instruction words. Check the mark allocation — a question worth 4 marks almost certainly expects 4 valid points. Then answer what’s asked, not what you wish had been asked.
Writing: Openings That Start Too Slowly
“One day, a girl called Emma was walking to school. It was a sunny morning and she felt happy. Suddenly something happened.”
This kind of opening — scene-setting, vague, slow — is extremely common and earns very few marks. Good writing openings do something immediate: they drop the reader into a moment, they create curiosity, they establish a voice. The reader should feel interested after the first sentence, not patiently waiting for something to begin.
Practise openings specifically. Write ten different opening sentences for the same story prompt. Then choose the best one. The ability to write a strong opening is learnable, and it has an enormous effect on the overall impression a piece makes.
Writing: Telling Instead of Showing
“She was very angry.” This tells us what the character is feeling but doesn’t make us feel it with her. “She didn’t say anything. She picked up her bag and left, and closed the door so carefully that it made no sound at all.” This shows us anger — through action, through detail, through what is conspicuously not said.
This “show don’t tell” principle is one of the most reliably mark-earning techniques in creative writing at 11+ and beyond. It requires writers to imagine the scene vividly and report its specific details, rather than summarising the emotional content from outside. Practise it until it becomes instinctive.
Time Management: Spending Too Long on One Section
Many children arrive at the 11+ without having practised managing their time across the whole paper. They spend twenty minutes on a question worth four marks, rush the comprehension at the end, and have no time to check their writing. This is entirely preventable with timed practice.
Practice papers should be done under strict exam conditions from the first one — not because it’s fun, but because the time pressure is a significant part of the challenge and children who are unaccustomed to it will find it much harder to manage on the day. Teach the discipline of moving on: if a question is taking too long, mark it and come back.
Writing: Not Checking at the End
Most children don’t check their work. Most children who do check their work don’t know what to look for. Build a specific checking routine: (1) Punctuation — is every sentence properly punctuated? (2) Paragraphs — is there a new paragraph for each new idea? (3) Vocabulary — can any basic word be replaced with a more interesting one? (4) Does the ending feel finished, or does it drop off mid-story?
Five minutes of this kind of focused checking can easily add several marks to a piece of writing.
These are exactly the skills practised in Thorogood English’s 11+ preparation groups — in small classes where every student’s work gets individual attention. Join the waiting list for January 2027 places.
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