We've looked at the data from HeyKitsu – the questions children answer, where they hesitate, where they get things wrong – and there's a consistent pattern in English.
It isn't the topics you'd expect. Children who struggle with reading comprehension generally know they need to work on it.
But there are topics that look manageable on paper but quietly drain marks on the day: grammar rules that feel intuitive until they aren't, punctuation conventions that have more exceptions than children realise, and one comprehension skill that even strong readers find difficult.
These are the three that come up most.
A quick note on the curriculum
The 11+ English exam is mapped to the KS2 national curriculum taught in Years 5 and 6. Most grammar schools use GL Assessment papers, which draw on both Year 5 and Year 6 content. If your child is sitting the ISEB Common Pre-Test or Quest Assessment for an independent school place, the scope is similar but narrows to roughly Year 5 content – and the format is computer-based and adaptive, which changes how you prepare.
The topics below are relevant across all three.
Prepositions
Prepositions are words that connect a noun or noun phrase to the rest of the sentence. They describe relationships of time, place or direction – words like in, among, during, beside and according to.
They're tricky for one reason: they look a lot like adverbs and conjunctions. A word like "before" can be all three, depending on how it's used. That ambiguity makes them hard to identify confidently, especially under exam pressure.
The rule that cuts through the confusion: a preposition is always followed by a noun, pronoun or noun phrase. If the word is followed by a clause with a verb, it's probably a conjunction.
Example:
- "She arrived before the doors opened." – before is a conjunction (followed by a clause)
- "She arrived before lunch." – before is a preposition (followed by a noun)
Children are unlikely to be asked to name prepositions directly, but preposition questions appear regularly in grammar sections – spotting them in sentences, completing sentences with the correct word, and identifying parts of speech. Knowing what a preposition does is more useful than memorising a list.
Direct and reported speech
Direct speech punctuation comes up more often than most parents expect, and it's one of the clearest examples of a topic where knowing the rules in theory isn't enough. Children need to have practised spotting errors in real sentences – which is exactly what "find the mistake" style questions test.
The rules to have solid:
Inverted commas go around the spoken words – not the reporting clause.
"Let's go!" he cried. ✓ "Let's go! he cried." ✗
Everything inside the inverted commas ends with a punctuation mark. If there's a reporting clause after the speech, use a comma before the closing inverted comma – not a full stop.
"We'll be late," she said. ✓ "We'll be late." she said. ✗
If the speech is interrupted by a reporting clause, it restarts in lowercase.
"But if we go now," Joy said, "we'll miss the fireworks." ✓ "But if we go now," Joy said, "We'll miss the fireworks." ✗
Each new speaker gets a new line. This one is tested less in multiple choice but matters for the creative writing task if your child's exam includes one.
These rules seem manageable written out, but children often mix them up when they're scanning a sentence quickly. The fix is straightforward: practise spotting mistakes in short passages, repeatedly, until the errors feel wrong rather than just technically incorrect.
Inference
Comprehension makes up a significant chunk of the 11+ English paper – and inference is consistently the hardest comprehension skill to develop. It's also the one that matters most.
Inference means reading between the lines: forming a view based on evidence rather than what's stated directly. It's different from retrieval (finding information that's explicitly in the text) or deduction (drawing a straightforward logical conclusion). Inference requires your child to consider what an author implies – through word choice, detail, tone and what's left unsaid.
Examples of inference questions:
- Why do you think the writer describes the town as "a place that time had quietly given up on"?
- What does the phrase "teeth gritted in determination" suggest about how Kwame was feeling?
These questions have no single right answer in the way a maths question does. The marks go to children who can point to specific evidence and explain what it suggests – not just what it says.
What actually helps:
Reading widely is necessary but not sufficient. Children who read a lot have a bigger vocabulary and a better instinct for how language works. But instinct doesn't translate into exam marks on its own. They need to practise articulating why a word or phrase creates a particular effect.
Discuss books rather than just reading them. Ask questions like: "How do you think that character was feeling when they said that?" or "Why do you think the author chose that word?" Guided reading – where you pause and probe – builds inference skills faster than reading alone.
Try the reverse exercise. Ask your child to write about a character who is angry, nervous or excited – without using the word itself. This gets them thinking like an author, which makes them much better at reading like one.
Learn the question keywords. Words like suggest, imply, deduce, infer, atmosphere and impression all signal an inference question. Recognising what's being asked is half the battle.
What to do with all of this
These three topics reward deliberate practice more than general ability – and the tricky thing is that children often don't know they have a gap until they're sitting in the exam.
HeyKitsu's Whole Curriculum Adaptation is designed to fix exactly that. Rather than working through content in a set order, the platform builds a picture of your child's strengths and weaknesses across the entire curriculum – and adjusts what they see based on where the gaps actually are. So if direct speech punctuation is the problem, they'll get more of it. If inference is fine but prepositions aren't, the platform finds that too.
It means you're not guessing what to focus on. And your child isn't wasting time on things they've already got.
The first three levels of every collection are permanently free – no credit card, no trial period.
Written by
HeyKitsu Team