11 plus Word Cards questions

What a Word Card looks like

Word Cards is the vocabulary project with nothing to choose from, and that one clause is the whole difference between it and every other vocabulary format used in 11 plus preparation. The others put a word in front of a child alongside a set of possible meanings, so a half-known word can still be got right by ruling out the obvious duds. A Word Card stops at the word. The meaning has to come out of memory, unprompted, or it does not come at all.

The front of a card carries one word in large type, its part of speech in small capitals above it, a button that plays the word read aloud, and the instruction to tap to reveal. That is everything. No sentence, no stem, no options.

Turning the card over shows the meaning, then an example sentence with the word picked out inside it, then two short lists, three words closest in meaning and three most nearly opposite. Below those sits a note holding a memory hook, or a second sense the main definition does not carry. Last comes the only decision your child makes: got it right, or got it wrong. They mark themselves, and that mark decides when the word comes back. A word marked wrong returns soon; a word marked right returns after a longer gap each time.

A card for “abundant”

The front shows abundant, labelled as an adjective. Nothing else.

Your child says the meaning aloud before turning it: present in such great quantity that there is more than enough. The back confirms that, gives the sentence “The garden was abundant in colourful flowers after the spring rain”, and sets plentiful, ample and copious against scarce, sparse and meagre.

The near miss to watch for is “lots of something”: the right neighbourhood, the wrong word. Abundant does not just mean many, it means more than the situation needs, which is why its opposite is meagre rather than few. Papers set that distinction on purpose, so it is worth correcting even when the answer sounded close.

A card for “waver”

The front shows waver, labelled as a verb.

The meaning is to become unsteady or begin to lose confidence, to hesitate. The sentence is “Her voice wavered as she admitted she had been the one who broke the window”, and the words closest in meaning are falter, hesitate and flicker, against persist, steady and stand firm.

Two near misses are common. The first is the sound-alike: children reach for “wave” and produce something about hands or flags. The second is narrowing it to feelings. A candle flame wavers in a draught, and so does a voice, and so does a person’s determination. Knowing that one word covers all three is the difference between spotting it in a sentence and being able to use it.

A card for “heyday”

The front shows heyday, labelled as a noun.

The meaning is the peak period of someone’s power, fame, popularity or prosperity. The sentence is “In her heyday, Granny had been the fastest runner on the south coast”, and the word sits against prime, peak and golden age on one side, decline, downfall and twilight on the other.

The near miss is treating it as simply “the past”. A heyday is not any earlier time, it is the best one, and the word only works when something has since fallen away from it. This is where the antonyms earn their place: reading downfall and twilight next to it settles the meaning faster than the definition does.

How to answer it

1. Read the word and its part of speech together before doing anything else. Knowing that “waver” is a verb rules out half of the wrong guesses on its own.
2. Say the meaning out loud, in your own words, before turning the card. Thinking “I know that one” is not the same as producing a definition, and the gap between them is where marks are lost.
3. Put the word into a sentence of your own, aloud. If the sentence will not come, the word is not known yet, whatever the meaning felt like.
4. Turn the card and read all of it. The definition, the sentence, the synonyms, the antonyms and the note each fix the word in a different way.
5. Mark honestly. Right only if the meaning was said before the card turned. Anything else is wrong, and marking it wrong is what brings the word back soon enough to matter.

Common mistakes

• Recognising instead of recalling. A child reads the definition, feels the click of familiarity, and marks the card right. Recognition is a much weaker form of knowing, and it collapses the moment a paper asks for the meaning with no options on the page.
• Marking generously. “I nearly had it” is the most expensive habit in flashcard work, because a right answer sends the word away for longer. Generous marking quietly hides the words that need the most work.
• Reading the definition and skipping the sentence. The definition says what a word means; the sentence shows how it is used, which is what most eleven plus vocabulary questions test.
• Treating the synonyms as identical words. Plentiful, ample and copious are close to abundant, not interchangeable with it. Shades of meaning are the whole point at this level, and papers set the near-miss deliberately.
• Doing a long stretch once a week. Vocabulary fades without repeated exposure. Ten minutes most days beats an hour on a Sunday, and it is the spacing that does the work rather than the total time.

How to practise 11 plus Word Cards questions

Wide reading sits behind all of this, because a word met three times in three different books is learned in a way no card can match. Cards earn their place as the deliberate half of the job: they cover the words your child has not happened to meet yet, and they bring back the ones that did not stick. 11+ Daily has a Word Cards project alongside the rest of the vocabulary work listed on our 11 plus English practice page, on laptop, tablet or phone, with each word recorded so your child hears it as well as reads it. Words return on a spaced schedule set by how your child marked them, and a setting reverses the card so the meaning comes first and the word has to be produced, which is worth doing once the basics are secure. Ten focused minutes a day is the shape that works, the pattern we set out in how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day. Every word, sentence and note is original to 11+ Daily, nothing is a past paper, nothing is licensed from another publisher, and the bank is re-checked in rounds.

Questions parents ask