Many of the 11+ spelling lists online are really vocabulary lists, full of words like acumen and corroborate that a child is more likely to be asked to define than to spell.
When I mark my students' 11+ practice writing, the misspellings are rarely the impressive words. They are definitely, separate, disappeared and until. So this post gives you the list I use in my own lessons, grouped by the reason the words go wrong, along with how spelling is tested and the routine I set for home.
Is There an Official 11+ Spelling List?
No. No grammar school or exam board publishes one. The closest thing is the Year 5 and 6 statutory word list in the National Curriculum: 100 words children are expected to spell by the end of primary school, from accommodate to yacht.
I use it, with two caveats. Most children sit the 11+ in September of Year 6, so their school may not have finished teaching these words. And the same appendix sets out the Year 5 and 6 spelling rules (endings like -cious and -tious, -cial and -tial, -ant and -ent, -able and -ible). Those rules are what I teach first, because one rule covers many words.
How Spelling Is Tested in the 11+
Spelling comes up in three ways. Which ones your child meets depends on the school.
1. Spot the mistake
GL-style papers split a sentence into four sections labelled A, B, C and D. Your child picks the section with the spelling mistake, or N if there isn't one. Collins notes that examiners include homophones, which a child will only catch if they read the sentence for meaning. In lessons, I have my students read each line aloud in their heads before they look for the mistake.
2. Choose the correct spelling
Some schools set their own papers and ask children to pick the correct spelling from a set of near misses. This example is from Tiffin School's illustrative English questions:
Choose the word which is correctly spelled. A) accommodate B) ackomodate C) accommadate D) acommodate E) akomodate
Every wrong option is a mistake a child could make, so choosing what "looks right" doesn't always work.
3. Spelling in their own writing
Wherever there is a writing task, spelling is marked under technical accuracy alongside punctuation and grammar. Mark schemes vary, but Cognito puts technical accuracy at around a third of the marks. Here your child has to spell the words they choose themselves, against the clock. In the writing I mark, this is where most spelling marks are lost.
Your target school's admissions page or familiarisation materials will tell you which formats to expect. If they aren't clear, I can help you work it out as part of my 11+ English tuition.
The 11 Plus Spelling List, Organised by Pattern
This is the list I use with my students. It includes most of the Year 5 and 6 statutory words, grouped by why they go wrong rather than from A to Z. I teach one family a week.
Double letters
Children can't hear whether a consonant is doubled, so they guess. I teach them to check the joins between the parts of a word.
Words: accommodate, accompany, aggressive, appreciate, committee, embarrass, exaggerate, immediately, interrupt, necessary, occasion, opportunity, possession, recommend, success, suggest, tomorrow (and the odd one out: harass has just one r)
-cious and -tious
If the root word ends in -ce, use -cious (space, spacious; malice, malicious). Otherwise -tious is more likely (ambition, ambitious).
Words: conscious, delicious, gracious, precious, spacious, suspicious, vicious, ambitious, cautious, fictitious, nutritious (exception: anxious)
-cial and -tial
-cial usually follows a vowel and -tial usually follows a consonant.
Words: artificial, crucial, official, special, essential, confidential, partial, substantial (exceptions: initial, financial, commercial)
-ant, -ance and -ent, -ence
A related word often gives the answer: hesitate and tolerate point to hesitant and tolerant. Many of the rest have to be learnt.
Words: hesitant, observant, relevant, tolerant, hindrance, convenience, existence, innocent, obedience, confidence, independent, frequently, sufficient
-able and -ible
-able is the more common ending, and it usually follows a complete root word (depend, dependable). If the root word ends in -ce or -ge, the e stays to keep the soft sound.
Words: available, considerable, dependable, noticeable, changeable, reliable, horrible, terrible, possible, sensible, visible, responsible
ie and ei
"i before e except after c" only works when the sound is "ee".
Words: achieve, believe, field, receive, ceiling, deceive, conceited (exceptions: protein, seize, weird)
ough
One spelling, several sounds. I teach these together so children can compare them side by side.
Words: though, through, thought, thorough, rough, cough, bough, borough
Silent letters
I get my students to say the word as it is spelt ("mus-cle", "Wed-nes-day") while they learn it. They think it's silly, and they remember it.
Words: conscience, doubt, island, knowledge, lamb, muscle, rhyme, rhythm, solemn, thistle, yacht, Wednesday
Hidden vowels
The vowel in an unstressed syllable sounds like "uh", so children guess. This is the group I correct most often in my students' writing.
Words: average, category, cemetery, definite, desperate, environment, government, parliament, separate, secretary, temperature, vegetable
Homophones and near homophones
For the -ce and -se pairs, the noun ends in -ce and the verb ends in -se (I need some advice; I advise you).
Words: advice and advise, practice and practise, principal and principle, stationary and stationery, who's and whose, affect and effect, passed and past, aloud and allowed, led and lead, morning and mourning
Adding suffixes to -fer words
Double the r if the -fer is still stressed after the ending is added (refer, referring), but not if it isn't (reference).
Words: referring, referred, reference, preferred, preference, transferred, transferring
British spellings and tricky one-offs
Spellcheckers, American books and online games all show children American spellings. UK exams expect British ones.
Words: colour, neighbour, marvellous, programme, recognise, criticise, queue, twelfth, forty, foreign, pronunciation, mischievous, restaurant, signature, soldier, stomach, vehicle
Words children use in creative writing
I built this group from the words I see misspelt in my students' stories. If you only print one group, print this one.
Words: atmosphere, beautiful, believe, conscious, definitely, desperately, disappeared, disappointed, especially, exhausted, extraordinary, hesitated, immediately, mysterious, silhouette, suddenly, surprised, unconscious, until, weird
Why Your Child's Own List Matters More Than Mine
The most useful list for your child is the list of words they get wrong. When a new student starts with me, one of the first things I do is go through a piece of their writing and note every misspelling. That list is more useful to me than any generic test.
A 2024 meta-analysis of 28 studies on morphology instruction (Colenbrander et al., 2024) found that the effects on spelling were strongest for the words children had practised. A meta-analysis of 53 studies by Graham and Santangelo (2014) found that formal spelling teaching improved spelling, including the spelling in children's own writing.
How to build a misspelling log
- Take a piece of writing your child has done recently: homework, a practice story or a diary entry.
- Underline every misspelt word.
- Copy the correct spellings into a notebook, and next to each one, note the pattern from the list above (double letters, hidden vowel and so on).
- After a few weeks, look for the pattern that keeps coming up. That family is where to focus.
When I do this with my students, two or three patterns usually account for most of their mistakes. Fixing those does more than learning a hundred unrelated words.
Teach the Why, Not Just the Word
Look, cover, write, check has its place, but it treats every word as something to memorise. The Colenbrander et al. meta-analysis found that teaching children how words are built (roots, prefixes and suffixes) had a larger effect on spelling than on reading, and that it carried over to words the children hadn't practised.
The strategy I use most in lessons is what I call the "relative trick". Many silent letters and hidden vowels can be heard in a related word:
- muscle → muscular (now you can hear the c)
- sign → signature (now you can hear the g)
- definite → define (now you can hear the i)
- competition → compete (now you can hear the e)
- grammar → grammatical (now you can hear the a)
- history → historical (now you can hear the o)
When your child is stuck on a word, ask: "Do you know a relative of this word?" The same word-building skills help with 11+ vocabulary and verbal reasoning.
A 15-Minute Spelling Routine for Home
This is the routine I give families. Research on spacing (Cepeda et al., 2006) shows that we remember more when practice is spread out, so the routine brings words back over several days.
- Day 1 (learn): Pick one pattern family and five to eight words, ideally from your child's misspelling log. Talk through the rule and look for relatives.
- Day 2 (use): Dictate two or three short sentences that use the words. Sentences are harder than single words and closer to the exam.
- Day 4 (test): A quick self-test from memory. Any word they get wrong goes back into the log.
- The following week: Mix last week's words into the new list. A word leaves the log once it has been spelt correctly on three separate days.
Practise the Exam Format
Once a pattern is secure, give your child a few spot-the-mistake lines. Here are three to try, with answers below.
- The visitors were | desperate to see | the ancient castle | before it closed. (A, B, C, D or N)
- Maya felt consious | of the silence as | she crept along | the dark corridor. (A, B, C, D or N)
- Our teacher gave | us some useful advise | about how to revise | for the test. (A, B, C, D or N)
You can write your own lines using words from the misspelling log. My students also enjoy writing lines for me to solve, and hiding a mistake well means they have to know where the trap is.
Answers: 1 is N (no mistake). 2 is A (conscious). 3 is B (advice, because it is a noun here).
When your child is ready for a full paper, an 11+ mock exam under timed conditions will show whether their spelling holds up against the clock.
Spelling on Exam Day
In the writing task, I see children lose more time stopping to worry about a spelling than they lose marks for the word itself. My advice is the same as in my post on timing in the 11+ creative writing exam: keep writing, lightly underline any word that doesn't look right and come back to it in the last few minutes. If they are still unsure, they can swap it for a word they know.
I also tell my students to keep using ambitious words. An ambitious word with a small slip usually shows the examiner more than a safe word spelt perfectly. For more on what examiners reward, see my guide to 11+ creative writing examples.
Where To Start
- Check your target school's familiarisation materials to see whether spelling is tested in multiple choice, in writing or both.
- Start a misspelling log from your child's own writing and find the two or three patterns behind most of their mistakes.
- Work through one pattern family a week, starting with hidden vowels and the creative writing words.
- Use the 15-minute routine, bringing old words back so they stick.
- Practise the spot-the-mistake format once the patterns are secure.
If you would like help finding your child's spelling gaps, I cover spelling, punctuation and grammar in my group and one-to-one 11+ English tuition. You can see everything I offer on my services page.