Looking Back at the Eleven Plus

I am very fortunate to have a copy of `Essential of Verbal Reasoning’ by O.B. Gregory. This was first published in 1963. Exercise 1 starts:

Write down the word which should be next in line. Choose your answer from the words in brackets:

Triangle, rectangle, pentagon (square, octagon, hexagon)


Find one word which is unlike the others:

Alter, regulate, adjust, modify, replace

In each line two words are opposite in meaning. Find the words:

Quality, right, success, mistake, error, failure


Find the words that complete the analogies:

Doom is to mood as (Ward, Matron, Plum) is to (Nurse, Lump, Draw)

I like to look at this book occasionally – and I often think about the teachers and psychologists who are making all the `New’ Eleven plus tests and papers. I wonder how many of them think about O.B. Gregory.

I did a search on Google for `O.B. Gregory’ – and there was a copy of the book for sale for 1p on Amazon.

So if you want to find out what Verbal Reasoning was like in the `old’ days then there is a copy on Amazon.

For those of you who are nostalgic – and would like to see what the questions were like in the days when you did the Eleven Plus – there is a copy on Amazon for just 1p.

Look back with Pride!