11+ English
Retrieving information that is stated in the passage — the accuracy foundation of 11+ comprehension.
Fact Finding appears in 131 of our 571 ready papers (452 tagged questions). It averages 3.5 questions a paper worth about 2.38 marks each. The typical question allows around 2.2 min. It appears in 4 CSSE papers we hold.
Fact-finding questions look easy and still lose marks when children skim. They ask for a name, a detail, a reason stated in the text, or a piece of information to locate precisely. Independent and grammar papers both use them to reward careful reading before harder inference. Children who answer from memory of the first skim, or who mix up similar characters and places, underperform. Practise scanning with a pencil, underlining the exact phrase, and checking the question words (who, when, where, how many) before writing. Teach children to resist “nearly right” answers that come from the wrong paragraph. A ten-second re-read of the asked detail after writing often saves the mark on what should have been the easiest question in the set.
A real tagged question from our catalogue — method included, not paywalled.
Ranked from our tagged catalogue — open a paper to practise the questions that actually test this topic.
Not sure whether fact finding is the problem? Mark any past paper on 11plusSolved and the report tells you which topics are costing marks — and how many.
