11 plus Spot the Misspelling questions

What a Spot the Misspelling question looks like

Spot the Misspelling is one of the English formats used in 11 plus papers. Your child is given a complete sentence, divided into four parts labelled A, B, C and D, and has to say which part contains the word that is spelt wrongly. It shares its layout with Spot the Punctuation Mistake, and the difference between them is worth knowing: in that format every word is spelt correctly and the fault is an apostrophe, a capital letter or a comma, whereas here the punctuation is sound and the fault is in the letters inside a word.

There is also a fifth option, N, which stands for no mistake. A small share of the sentences are correct from beginning to end, and N is the right answer to those. It is the part of the format parents least expect, and it is where a confident child often loses a mark.

The errors themselves cover a narrow, predictable set. Letters swapped round, as in geust for guest or contineu for continue. A double letter missed or added, as in acident, atached or scisors. A vowel dropped altogether, as in acadmy or idntity. The ie and ei pair the wrong way round, as in recieved or seige. A silent letter left out, as in kniht or aile. Endings that sound the same but are not, such as assistence for assistance or spetial for special. An American spelling where the British one is wanted, such as colors or center. And a handful of homophones, where every letter is correct but the word is not: flour and flower, plain and plane, whose and who’s.

Example one: a double letter

Read it through once for the meaning, then go back and look at each word letter by letter. Accident is spelt with two c’s, one making a hard k sound and one making a soft s sound, so acident is short of a letter. It sits in part A.

The answer is A.

Part B is the tempting one. Occurred is a genuinely difficult word, with a double c and a double r, and a child who has been told it is difficult will suspect it on sight. It is spelt correctly here. Being a hard word is not the same as being the wrong word, and the questions are built to exploit exactly that instinct.

Example two: an ending that sounds right

Say the sentence to yourself and nothing sounds amiss, which is the point. Assistance and assistence are pronounced identically. The ending here is ance, not ence, so assistence is wrong, and it sits in part C.

The answer is C.

Part D pulls a lot of children. Difficult is long and has a double f in it, so it feels like the risky word, but every letter of it is right. This example also shows why reading aloud is such a poor test for this format: your ear will pass an error like this every time, and only your eye will catch it.

Example three: nothing wrong at all

Work through the parts in turn. Curator, explained, ancient, artefacts, carefully, preserved, centuries. Artefacts is the one that gives people pause, because the American spelling artifacts is common enough on screens that the British form can look like a slip. It is not. Every word here is spelt correctly.

The answer is N.

The trap is the trap of the whole format: the assumption that a question must have something wrong in it. Part C is the one that draws the eye, because artefacts is the least familiar shape on the line. A child who has checked all four parts and found nothing should be willing to say so.

How to answer it

1. Read the whole sentence once at normal speed, for the meaning. You cannot judge a word like plain, flour or there until you know what the sentence is actually saying.
2. Read it again slowly, one word at a time, looking at the letters rather than listening to the sound. Cover the rest of the line with a finger if that helps.
3. When a word looks doubtful, break it into syllables and rebuild it: as, sis, tance. Then check the four places these questions like to hide an error, which are double letters, the vowel in the middle, the ending, and any letter you do not pronounce.
4. Note which part the doubtful word sits in, then check the other three parts before you commit. Only one word is wrong, so a second candidate means you have misjudged one of them.
5. If you have been through all four parts and everything is right, answer N. That is a proper answer, not a last resort.

Common mistakes

• Trusting the ear instead of the eye. Assistence, preferance, ficticious and spetial all sound correct when read aloud. If your child is checking by pronouncing the sentence, these will pass every time.
• Suspecting the hardest-looking word. Occurred, extraordinary, unmistakable and neighbourhood are long and awkward, and in the questions they are usually spelt correctly and put there to draw the eye.
• Forgetting that a real word can still be the wrong word. In there were no seats left and their were no seats left, every letter is a letter of a real English word. Only the meaning tells you which is wanted.
• Missing an American spelling. Color, center, favorite, traveling and harbor turn up constantly in books and on screens, so they stop looking odd. In this format only the British form counts as correct.
• Refusing to answer N. A child who believes every sentence must contain an error will pick the least familiar word and lose the mark on a sentence that was perfectly fine.

How to practise 11 plus Spot the Misspelling questions

The habit that helps most is slow, deliberate rereading, and it is worth practising on your child’s own writing as much as on questions: ask them to find the doubtful words in a paragraph they have just written, then check those words rather than the whole piece. Keep a running list of the ones that catch them repeatedly, because the same twenty or thirty words tend to account for most of the lost marks across the eleven plus year. Short and regular beats long and occasional here, which is the pattern we set out in how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day. 11+ Daily has a Spot the Misspelling project alongside the other English formats, on laptop, tablet or phone, and the full set is listed on our 11 plus English practice page. Every question is original to 11+ Daily, nothing is a past paper and nothing is licensed from another publisher, and the bank is re-checked in rounds.

Questions parents ask