Cambridge Select Insight 11 Plus English Exam

Cambridge Select Insight are a testing body which has attempted to muddy the waters in terms of traditional 11 Plus subjects. Cambridge Select Insight have no specific English exam choosing instead to call it Verbal Reasoning. In reality though the Cambridge Select Insight Verbal Reasoning Test is an English exam. It can/will/has contained the following elements:

• A standard comprehension exercise
• A CLOZE comprehension (a piece of text with missing letters to be filled in, or one word from three or four to be chosen as correct)
• A jumbled sentence exercise (putting words in the right order)
• An opposites/synonyms section
• A vocabulary test

In other words while Cambridge Select Insight call their literacy test ‘verbal reasoning’ in fact it should be treated like an English paper. Without very solid core English skills pupils will not do well.

While it is useful to do some familiarisation on the type of questions which are likely to come up (see above), Cambridge Select Insight can vary this at any time.

As an example of the variety Cambridge Select Insight could introduce here are two examples:

–  Cambridge Select Insight 11 Plus English/VR  exams have used ‘jumbled sentences’, they could just as easily change this to ‘jumbled paragraphs’ – where the paragraphs of a story are mixed up and need to be put in the right order.

– Cambridge Select Insight 11 Plus English/VR exams do not currently contain grammar, punctuation and spelling tests but they have done previously. These could be introduced without warning.

If you are preparing at home then go through to our Cambridge Select Insight 11 Plus preparation page for some guidance on what to do when.