If you've looked at a sample verbal reasoning paper with your child and thought "what on earth is this?", you're not alone. It's one of those subjects that sounds vague but is actually very specific. Once you understand what it's testing, it becomes a lot less mysterious.
What is verbal reasoning?
Verbal reasoning is about using language to solve problems. Not reading comprehension, not spelling or grammar — but the ability to spot patterns in words, understand relationships between them, and apply logical rules to language.
A typical paper might ask your child to find a word that completes an analogy. Or decode a simple word cipher. Or work out which word doesn't belong in a group. None of it requires knowing obscure vocabulary. It rewards clear, flexible thinking.
Why is verbal reasoning on the 11+?
The idea is that verbal reasoning tests something closer to reasoning ability than learned knowledge. A child who's been drilled on SATs papers will have strong literacy scores. Verbal reasoning is supposed to be harder to coach. It's meant to show how well a child can think with language, not just what they've absorbed in lessons.
Whether that's entirely true is debatable. Practice does help. But the underlying logic is that grammar schools want to select children who can handle the pace and abstraction of a selective curriculum. Verbal reasoning is one way to probe for that.
The main question types
There are roughly fifteen question types that appear across 11+ verbal reasoning papers, though the exact mix varies between exam boards. The ones that catch children most off-guard tend to be the ones involving letter codes and letter sequences. They look nothing like anything a Year 5 child has done at school.
Word analogies ask children to complete a relationship: "big is to small as hot is to ___." Sounds simple. The harder versions use less obvious connections and include plausible wrong answers designed to trip you up.
Letter series present a sequence like A, C, F, J and ask what comes next. The gap between letters changes according to a rule. In this example the gaps are 2, 3, 4, so the next gap is 5, making the answer O. It's not maths, but it's not far off either.
Word codes turn a word into a letter string using a substitution cipher and ask your child to decode another word using the same system. These require careful, methodical working. A child who rushes will make errors.
Hidden words are a gentler type. They ask your child to find a real word that's hidden across the boundary between two words in a sentence. Finding "ogre" hidden in "the dog reads" is a simple version. This tests how flexibly a child can read.
Odd one out, synonyms, and antonyms round out most GL papers. These are more vocabulary-dependent than the others, so wider reading genuinely helps here.
GL Assessment vs CEM
This matters quite a bit depending on where you live. GL Assessment papers tend to be longer, use multiple choice, and are divided into clear sections by question type. Your child knows what's coming. CEM papers, used in areas like Birmingham and parts of West Yorkshire, mix verbal and numerical reasoning together in a way that's designed to feel more unpredictable. CEM doesn't publish a definitive list of question types, and the format shifts between years.
Most of Kent, Buckinghamshire, and Essex use GL Assessment. Gloucestershire and Wiltshire also tend to use GL. If you're not sure which format your local grammar uses, check the school's admissions page directly. It will say.
That distinction should shape how you practise. In a GL area, your child can get familiar with each question type in isolation before putting them together under timed conditions. For CEM, the focus needs to be more on generalised reasoning speed and comfort with ambiguity.
What does good verbal reasoning practice actually look like?
Timed practice matters more here than in almost any other 11+ subject. Some GL verbal reasoning papers run to 80 questions in 50 minutes. That's roughly 37 seconds per question. A child who understands the methods but works slowly will still run out of time.
The most useful approach is to start without a timer. Work through each question type until your child understands the method. Then introduce time pressure gradually. Rushing before the methods are secure leads to guessing habits that are hard to break later.
Running a diagnostic early is worth doing. Not all children struggle with the same question types. Some find letter codes intuitive and fall apart on analogies. Some are the opposite. Knowing where the gaps actually are means you can target practice rather than grinding through full papers on topics your child has already nailed.
readyfor11.co.uk has free diagnostic questions across multiple verbal reasoning types so you can identify exactly where the weaknesses are. That's a more efficient use of prep time than starting at question one and working through.
A word about vocabulary
Reading helps, but probably not in the way most parents expect. Verbal reasoning doesn't test vocabulary directly on most question types. What reading does is give children a more natural feel for how words relate to each other. They've seen analogies and word relationships in context thousands of times without realising it.
This doesn't mean forcing your child through classics they hate. Fiction, non-fiction, long-form articles, quality websites: anything a step above their usual reading level will help. The key is that it doesn't feel like exam prep.
How to approach the final weeks before the exam
By the time you're six to eight weeks out, your child should have seen every question type at least a dozen times. The work at that stage is speed and accuracy under pressure, not understanding new methods.
Full timed papers done in exam conditions are useful here. Sit them at a desk, no distractions, timer running. Then go through every wrong answer together and work out whether it was a method error or a timing error. Those require different fixes.
If your child is consistently strong on some types and weak on others, it's worth spending the final weeks concentrating on the weak ones rather than doing balanced mixed practice. Marginal gains on your weakest areas move your overall score more than further polishing what's already working.
FAQ
My child is good at English at school but struggles with verbal reasoning. Why?
School English rewards what your child knows: spelling, grammar, comprehension, creative writing. Verbal reasoning rewards how they think with language. The skills overlap but they're not the same thing. A child who writes beautifully can still find letter codes genuinely hard until they've seen the method a few times. It's not a reading problem, it's an unfamiliarity problem.
When should we start practising verbal reasoning?
Most families start in Year 5, with the exam in autumn of Year 6. Starting practice in the spring or summer of Year 5 gives enough time to work through the question types, build speed, and do some full timed papers without it taking over family life. Starting later than January of Year 6 is tight but not impossible if your child is a strong reasoner to begin with.
How different is verbal reasoning in GL vs CEM areas?
In GL areas, verbal reasoning is a standalone paper with distinct question types. In CEM areas, verbal reasoning questions are mixed into a combined paper alongside numerical reasoning, and the time pressure is intense. Children in CEM areas generally need more practice with switching quickly between different types of thinking. Pure verbal reasoning drilling isn't enough.
Does verbal reasoning require a tutor?
Not necessarily. The question types are learnable from practice papers and video explanations. What a tutor adds is feedback on method errors and a structured pace. If you've got the time to sit with your child and work through wrong answers carefully, you can do that yourself. The main thing that's hard to replicate without a tutor is accountability, and that's a parenting challenge, not a knowledge gap.
If you want to see where your child actually stands on verbal reasoning right now, readyfor11.co.uk lets you run a free benchmark test. No account needed, no paywall. You'll get a clear picture of which question types need more work and which ones they've already got sorted.