Comprehension questions test the vocabulary and precision an 11+ English paper is really examining. Here is what is being asked, how to reason it out rather than guess, and five worked examples with full explanations, rising in difficulty.
English · examined by GL and CEM · 5 worked examples
What your child needs to know
Read the passage once, then read the question. Do not answer from memory.
Go BACK to the passage and find the line that answers it. Put your finger on it.
Where marks get lost: An option can be true in real life and still be wrong here. If the passage does not say it, it is not the answer.
Worked examples
Every question below is generated by the same engine your child practises on, and every answer is derived by our checker rather than written by hand — which is why we can put them on a public page at all.
Example 1 · level 1 — a gentle start
What was the parsley tied with?
Market Day
On Saturdays the square filled with stalls before the sun was properly up. Mrs Okonjo sold bread from a trestle table at the north end, beside the fountain. Her loaves were always gone by nine o'clock. Across from her, a man called Petrov mended umbrellas for twenty pence each, and next to him a girl sold bunches of parsley tied with red wool. By noon the square smelled of wet canvas and hot sugar, and the pigeons had grown bold.
wet canvas
red wool
hot sugar
a trestle table
Answer:red wool — Bunches of parsley tied with red wool.
Example 2 · level 2 — typical of early practice
What was the cat's name?
The Lighthouse Keeper
Every evening, Mr Hale climbed the ninety-two steps to the lamp room. The lighthouse stood on a rock called Black Point, half a mile from the village. He carried a tin of oil in one hand and a folded newspaper in the other. At the top he wound the clockwork that turned the great lens, and the beam swung out across the water. In winter the wind rattled the glass so hard that he could not hear the sea below. His only company was a grey cat named Sixpence, who slept on the warm floor beside the lamp.
Black Point
the great lens
Sixpence
Mr Hale
Answer:Sixpence — A grey cat named Sixpence.
Example 3 · level 3 — standard paper difficulty
How many human-made sounds did the recorded bird produce?
The Starling's Trick
A starling can imitate almost any sound it hears often enough: a car alarm, a telephone, the creak of a gate. The ability is not learnt in order to deceive. Male starlings with the largest repertoires attract more mates, so the mimicry is closer to a display of memory than to a disguise. Researchers at Cambridge recorded one bird producing fourteen distinct human-made sounds in a single afternoon. The same study noted that birds raised in isolation produced almost none, which suggests the repertoire is copied rather than inherited.
a single afternoon
the largest repertoires
Cambridge
fourteen
Answer:fourteen — One bird producing fourteen distinct human-made sounds.
Example 4 · level 4 — a harder paper
What did the man in the garden keep?
The Canal at Dusk
The canal had been dug in 1794 to carry coal from the pits at Hensall to the mills downstream, and for sixty years it was the busiest waterway in the county. Then the railway came, and within a decade the barges had all but vanished. By the time Ada was born, the towpath was used only by walkers and by a man who kept bees in the old lock-keeper's garden. The water lay flat and brown between the banks, and in the evenings herons stood in it without moving, as patient as the brickwork behind them.
herons
barges
coal
bees
Answer:bees — A man who kept bees in the old lock-keeper's garden.
Example 5 · level 5 — the level that separates candidates
What was the ship called?
The Winter Expedition
Shackleton's party left South Georgia on 5 December 1914 with sixty-nine dogs and a crew of twenty-eight. Their ship, the Endurance, was trapped in pack ice within six weeks and drifted for ten months before it was crushed. The men camped on the floes, hauling three lifeboats behind them. What is remarkable is not that the ship was lost but that every member of the crew survived, a fact that owed as much to the discipline of the daily routine as to any single act of heroism.
pack ice
the Endurance
three lifeboats
South Georgia
Answer:the Endurance — Their ship, the Endurance.
How to practise this at home
Vocabulary is cumulative, so a small number of words revisited over weeks beats a long list crammed the night before.
Ask your child to use a new word in a sentence about their own day — a word they can only define is a word they will lose under pressure.
When a question turns on a shade of meaning, talk about why the near-miss option is wrong. That is the skill being examined.
Practise comprehension with a tutor that explains
One4Learning serves questions at your child’s level, marks them instantly and — when one goes wrong — teaches the step they missed rather than showing the answer. Start with ten free questions, no account needed.