English
Sounds and rhymes, spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary, from first letters up to the words adults get wrong.
Choose a year group
First sounds, rhyming words, capital letters at the start of a name, and which word means the opposite.
9 topics ยท 72 questions
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Blends and digraphs, naming words and doing words, full stops and question marks, and simple plurals.
10 topics ยท 80 questions
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Common spelling patterns, describing words, joining sentences, apostrophes for missing letters, and past tense.
10 topics ยท 80 questions
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Prefixes and suffixes, speech marks, homophones, word families, and the difference between a noun and a pronoun.
9 topics ยท 72 questions
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Fronted adverbials, commas in lists, plural rules that break, synonyms and antonyms, and word roots.
9 topics ยท 72 questions
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Relative clauses, modal verbs, brackets and dashes, tricky spellings, and shades of meaning between similar words.
9 topics ยท 72 questions
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Active and passive, subjunctive forms, colons and semicolons, formal versus informal register, and the harder spelling rules.
9 topics ยท 72 questions
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Commonly confused words, punctuation people get wrong in writing, genuine word meanings, and a few etymologies that are not what you would expect.
10 topics ยท 80 questions
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About the english questions
English starts with the sounds inside words - rhyme, first letters, the difference between a naming word and a doing word - and works up through spelling patterns, punctuation, sentence types and word meanings to the vocabulary and usage questions that catch out confident adults.
Questions about spelling always say which spelling they mean when British and American English differ, because marking a child wrong for writing colour is not teaching, it is a trick. Punctuation questions deliberately offer options that differ only by a comma or an apostrophe, since telling those apart is the whole skill.
Every answer comes with a one-line explanation of the rule behind it. Getting a question wrong and being told why is worth more than getting it right by luck, so the explanation appears either way.
Frequently asked
British or American spelling?๏ผ
The site is written in British English, but any question where the two differ says so explicitly, so nobody is marked wrong for the spelling they were taught.
Does it cover phonics?๏ผ
The Reception and Year 1 sets are built around initial sounds, rhyme and simple blends, which is the phonics stage. Read-aloud is on by default for those years.
What does the grown-ups set cover?๏ผ
Commonly confused words, real word meanings, punctuation that people get wrong in emails, and the origins of a few words that are not what you would guess.