The GL 11 plus question type checklist
There is no official list of GL 11 plus question types, because no board publishes the specification for a live test. This is the next best thing: the families that recur, in one place, so you can see what your child has met and what they have not.
What this list is, and what it is not
No board publishes the specification for a live 11 plus paper, and GL Assessment is no exception. There is no syllabus to download, so this page is not one and should not be read as one.
What it is: the recurring question families, drawn from the formats GL papers use and from the free familiarisation material GL publishes for each subject. They are stable, which is the useful part: a child who has met one before reads the instructions once and gets on. Our guide to why the GL 11 plus is learnable sets out why they recur, and where that stops being true.
Three limits. This is not a promise that these families and only these will appear. It is not tagged to any area, board or school. And the admissions authority decides which of the four subjects are used at all and how they are weighted, so part of this list may not apply to you. Confirm the arrangements with the admissions authority. Our guide to the GL Assessment 11 plus covers who decides what, and which areas are moving provider.
Each name links to a fuller page where we have one.
Verbal Reasoning question types
The most format-driven of the four subjects. Underneath all twenty-five families sits vocabulary, which no amount of format practice replaces. Our post on GL Verbal Reasoning question types goes through the main ones in more depth.
Alphabet and making words
| Question type | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Complete the Word | Three letters gone from a capital word, and they spell a word. |
| Compound Words | One word from each bracket, joined in order, spell a real word. |
| Hidden Word | A four-letter word hides across the boundary of two words. |
| Insert a Letter | One letter ends the first word and starts the second. |
| Move a Letter | Move a letter from the first word to the second, both real. |
| Same Missing Letter | Two jumbled words have lost the same letter. Find it. |
| Sentence Extra Word | Rearrange the words into a sentence and name the one left over. |
Codes and sequences
| Question type | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Letter Connections | A letter pair shifts through the alphabet. Apply that shift. |
| Letter Series | Continue a run of letters by finding the alphabet pattern. |
| Letter-Position Bridge | The middle word comes from fixed letter positions of the outer two. |
| Letter-Shift Codes | One word and its code. Work out the rule, then apply it. |
| Letter-Transform Pairs | Two pairs show the same letter change. Apply it to a third. |
| Word-Number Codes | Four words, three codes. Match them up, then encode a word. |
Maths and logic
| Question type | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Complete the Sum | Not a plain sum: an equation with a value missing, to balance. |
| Letters for Numbers | A fresh key of letters and values. The answer is a letter. |
| Number Analogies | Two outside numbers and a bracketed one. Find the rule. |
| Number Series | Find the next number by working out the rule behind it. |
| Reading Information | A short set of facts, then five statements. One must be true. |
Vocabulary and word meanings
| Question type | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Closest Meaning | Two bracketed sets, one word from each, closest in meaning. |
| Opposite Meaning | Two bracketed sets, one word from each, most opposite in meaning. |
| Related Words | A word analogy across two brackets. Naming the link is the work. |
| Rhyme and Synonym | The bracketed word rhymes with a synonym of the answer. |
| Two Odd Ones Out | Five words, three connected. Name the two that are not. |
| Word Connections | One word with two senses, one for each bracketed set. |
| Word Grid | A two-by-three grid, themed rows and linked columns, one gap. |
Non-Verbal Reasoning question types
Eight families, and the ones a parent is least likely to recognise from their own schooling. Every one is a rule read off a figure, so the work is checking every feature.
| Question type | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Complete the Pair | Something turns the first figure into the second. Do it again. |
| Complete the Grid | One square missing, and the answer obeys its row and its column. |
| Series | Five figures with one missing. What changes at each step? |
| Odd One Out | Five figures, four follow a rule. Pick the one that breaks it. |
| Find Like First Two | Two figures share a property. Find the option that shares it. |
| Find Like First Three | Three figures share a property. Find the option that shares it. |
| Horizontal Code | Code letters sit beside each figure. Code the one that has none. |
| Vertical Code | A letter code is printed with each figure. Build the missing one. |
English, and the part of it that is not a question type
Read this before the tables, because the tables alone would mislead you.
A reading comprehension is a large part of the GL English paper, and it is not a question family in the sense this page uses. The passage is new every time, and the questions turn on inference, vocabulary in context and what the writer was doing. There is no format to recognise, so it cannot be ticked off a list: it is built by reading widely over years and by working on vocabulary over months. Our guide to 11 plus English comprehension and writing covers that half properly.
What follows is the other half: the vocabulary, spelling and grammar families, which do recur. Two of them, the error-spotting formats, are shaped as papers present them, with the sentence split into chunks.
Vocabulary
| Question type | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Synonyms | One word, five options. Choose the closest in meaning. |
| Antonyms | One word, five options. Choose the opposite. |
| Pick the Meaning | One word, five definitions, four of them plausible. |
| Vocab in Context | One word singled out in a sentence, and the sentence decides. |
| Idioms and Phrase Meaning | An everyday saying in a sentence. What does the phrase mean? |
| Figurative Language | Name the technique: simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia, exaggeration. |
| Word Cards | One word, nothing to choose from. Say the meaning, then mark yourself. |
Spelling
| Question type | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Spellings | A word inside a sentence. Is it spelt correctly, and if not? |
| Spot the Misspelling | A sentence in labelled parts. Which part holds the misspelling? |
Grammar and punctuation
| Question type | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Spot the Punctuation Mistake | A sentence in labelled parts. Which part has a mark wrong? |
| Fill the Gap | Five forms of one choice, so the test is grammar, not vocabulary. |
| Sentence Grammar | Which word is the subject, object, verb or conjunction, or how many nouns. |
Maths topics rather than question types
Maths is the subject where “question type” is the wrong frame. The paper draws on the Key Stage 2 curriculum, so what recurs is the topic, not the format: a fractions question can arrive as a calculation, a word problem, a shaded diagram or a line on a chart. Read it as a coverage list of thirty-three topics.
Number
| Topic | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Place Value and Ordering | Order numbers to six digits, write words as figures, round. |
| Four Operations and BODMAS | Word problems, and calculations where the order you work in decides it. |
| Negative Numbers | Count across zero, order values below it, find a gap. |
| Number Properties | Multiples, factors, primes, squares and cubes, often stacked. |
| Roman Numerals | Read and write numerals, including years and clock faces. |
Fractions, decimals and percentages
| Topic | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Fractions: Basics and Equivalents | Order fractions, simplify one, complete an equivalent pair. |
| Fractions of Amounts | A fraction of a real quantity, sometimes in two stages. |
| Fractions of Shapes | Read the shaded parts off a figure and give the fraction. |
| Decimals | Order and compare, and move the point by 10, 100 and 1,000. |
| Percentages | A percentage of an amount, a price in a sale, or back to the whole. |
| FDP Conversions | Rewrite a value as a fraction, a decimal or a percentage. |
Algebra
| Topic | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Equations and Missing Numbers | The number hiding behind a letter or a question mark. |
| Function Machines and Inverse | Send a number through a chain of boxes, or work backwards. |
| Sequences and Patterns | A term missing anywhere in a run, or the rule itself. |
Geometry
| Topic | What it asks |
|---|---|
| 2D Shapes and Properties | Sides, angles, parallel lines and lines of symmetry. |
| 3D Shapes and Nets | Faces, edges and vertices, and what a net folds into. |
| Angles | A missing angle on a line, at a point, or in a quadrilateral. |
| Coordinates and Position | Plot points, then find distances, halfway points and missing corners. |
| Transformations | Slide, flip or turn a shape, or name the move made. |
Measurement
| Topic | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Units and Conversion | The same measurement in another unit, usually inside a problem. |
| Perimeter, Area and Volume | Distance round, surface covered and space held. |
| Time and Timetables | The 12 and 24-hour clock, durations, and printed timetables. |
| Money | Change from a note, several items at one price, saving up. |
Statistics and data
| Topic | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Bar Charts and Pictograms | Read values off a bar chart or a pictogram, then compare. |
| Line Graphs and Pie Charts | Read a value off a line, or a pie slice as a fraction. |
| Tables and Two-Way Tables | Every number is printed. The work is picking the right cells. |
| Mean, Median, Mode and Range | The average, the middle value, the most common, highest minus lowest. |
| Venn Diagrams | Overlapping circles with number rules. Read a region, or place a number. |
Problem solving, reasoning and ratio
| Topic | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Multi-Step Word Problems | No sum is written out, so the first job is deciding what to do. |
| Classification and Logic | Several rules at once, and one option of five meets them all. |
| Estimation and Approximation | Is this amount a sensible size? Round to make a sum easy. |
| Inverse, or Think of a Number | Two or three steps, then the answer. Run them backwards. |
| Ratio and Scaling | Share a total in a ratio, scale a recipe, or work back. |
How to use this 11 plus question type checklist
Work down one subject at a time. Mixing subjects feels like variety and produces a child who has half-met forty things.
Mark a type done only when it is secure, which is a higher bar than seen. Secure means the child recognises the family unprompted on a fresh question and gets it right without a nudge. The gap between the two is where most of the disappointment in the eleven plus lives, and a checklist ticked on “seen” says a job is finished when it is not.
Expect the unfamiliar rows to be the slow ones: a family a child has never met takes a few sittings to become reliable, and that is normal. The rows that look easiest in Verbal Reasoning are the vocabulary ones, which depend on months of reading rather than on the format.
Finally, treat the list as coverage, not a forecast. Nobody outside the board and your admissions authority has seen this year’s paper. Recognising what is being asked is worth having, and is not the same as knowing what is coming.
Where 11+ Daily fits
Tracking which of seventy-odd families a child has met, which are secure and which have gone stale is what makes home preparation drift. 11+ Daily is built around that. The Today screen picks one subject and one specific skill for a session of roughly seven to ten minutes, and a parents area shows which skills have been covered and how accurately. Questions are original to 11+ Daily and organised by skill, not tagged to any area or school. Our Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning follow the GL question types; the Maths covers what any 11 plus paper tests; the English builds the vocabulary, spelling and grammar that a comprehension paper rests on, and the error-spotting uses the chunked format papers use, though we do not practise comprehension passages themselves. We are not connected to GL Assessment. The 14-day free trial needs no card.
Questions parents ask
Is there an official list of GL 11 plus question types?
How many question types are in the GL 11 plus?
Is reading comprehension an 11 plus question type?
Does every area test all four 11 plus subjects?
Which 11 plus question types should a child practise first?
Try 11+ Daily with your child.
Daily 11+ practice that knows what to revise next. English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning on laptop, tablet or phone. Real progress parents can see.
