St Olave's 11+ Vocabulary and Grammar: Word Classes & Multiple Meanings

Preparing for the St Olave’s Grammar School entrance tests requires more than learning simple definitions. Published sample materials show that candidates may be tested on comprehension, grammar and logic, including how words function within sentences.

1. Word Classes

One question type requires children to identify the odd-one-out from a list of household items based on which word classes each word can belong to:

• Table: A piece of furniture (noun), or to present a proposal or subject for formal discussion (verb).
• Cup: A small drinking container (noun), or to hold something gently in curved hands (verb).
• Water: The liquid that people, animals and plants need (noun), or to pour water onto plants or soil (verb).
• Squash: A racket sport or concentrated fruit drink (noun), or to press or crush something until it becomes flatter (verb).
• The odd one out: A word such as beaker, which in ordinary modern English is used as a noun rather than as both a noun and a verb.

2. Less Familiar Contextual Meanings

Selective comprehension questions may use familiar words in less familiar formal, literary, legal or scientific senses. Children therefore need to work out meaning from context rather than automatically choosing the definition they know best:

• Save: Used in formal or literary English as a preposition meaning except, as in "I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle".
• Party: In formal or legal writing, one of the people, groups or sides involved in an agreement, dispute or legal matter.
• Suspended: Remaining floating or dispersed in air or another substance, rather than being punished or temporarily stopped.

3. Identifying Literary Devices & Advanced Grammar

Rather than just asking what happens in a story, St Olave's tests expect candidates to look at the mechanics of the language itself. Children must identify specific literary terms used by authors to create an effect:

• Hyperbole (Exaggeration): Recognising deliberate exaggeration for dramatic effect, such as H.G. Wells writing, "The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast for me".
• Personification: Giving human actions or qualities to something non-human, like "the sun hopping swiftly across the sky".
• Simile: Identifying direct comparisons, such as a passage describing darkness following day "like the flapping of a black wing".
• Less familiar vocabulary: Understanding words that may be uncommon to children, such as switchback, meaning a road or track with sharp bends or steep rises and falls.
• Parts of Speech Precision: Children may need to identify abstract nouns such as absurdity or mirth, recognise prepositions such as under, and distinguish when a word such as those is functioning as a pronoun rather than a determiner.

4. Heteronyms & Pronunciation Pitfalls

Some advanced verbal-reasoning exercises also test heteronyms: words that are spelt identically but pronounced differently according to their meaning. Papers demand children mentally change their pronunciation to find the odd-one-out:

• Wind: Moving air, pronounced to rhyme with pinned; or to turn or twist something, pronounced to rhyme with find.
• Wound: An injury, pronounced "woond"; or the past tense of wind, pronounced "wownd".
• Entrance: A doorway or act of entering, with stress on the first syllable; or to captivate someone, with stress on the second syllable.

How to prepare effectively

Because St Olave’s examines how children understand language in context, learning one isolated definition for each word is not enough. Children benefit from seeing words used in different sentences and consciously identifying whether each word is functioning as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun or preposition.

Broad reading, together with short and regular practice in contextual vocabulary, multiple meanings and grammar, can help children develop the flexibility required for selective English and verbal-reasoning questions.