Twenty-seven combinations, one mark: complete the sentence
The Short Answer
This question gives three groups of three words and asks your child to pick one from each so the sentence makes sense. Three groups of three makes twenty-seven possible sentences, and the question is written so that only one makes ordinary sense. All three choices must be right to score, so the order of working matters: start with the middle group, because the verb decides what can perform the action and what it can be performed on.
What is a complete the sentence question?
Your child is given a sentence with three gaps, and three choices for each gap. They pick one word from each group so that the sentence makes sense.
Three groups of three means twenty-seven possible sentences. The question is written so that only one of them makes ordinary sense, and all three choices have to be right to score. Two out of three earns nothing.
That last point is worth saying to a child directly. It changes how carefully they check, and it explains why this is not a question to rush.
The verb decides everything else
Start with the middle group, every time.
A verb answers two questions at once. What kind of thing could perform this action? — which rules words out of the first group. What kind of thing could this action be performed on? — which rules words out of the last.
A verb that survives both tests is almost always the answer, and your child will usually know within fifteen seconds. Starting with the subject tells you far less, because most subjects can plausibly do most things until a verb narrows them.
How do you teach the method?
Take the three verbs in turn. For each, ask what could do it and what it could be done to.
Discard any verb that has no possible subject or no possible object among the words given.
Fit the surviving verb to its subject and object.
Read the whole sentence back. Grammatical is not the same as sensible, and this is where the difference shows.
Can you show me a worked example?
The diagram shows the two checks on the verb that survives — who does it, and what it is done to — and then the sentence read back whole.
Where do pupils lose marks?
Starting with the subject. It narrows nothing and wastes the first fifteen seconds.
Accepting a grammatical sentence. The pebble seasoned the sunlight has the shape of a sentence and says nothing. Only reading it back as a whole catches it.
Getting two right. Which scores the same as getting none right, and is far more frustrating.
Try it yourself
Choose one word from each group so the sentence makes sense. Start with the middle group and read your answer back in full.
- The (chef, curtain, pebble) (seasoned, faded, sank) the (soup, sunlight, pond).
- The (author, kettle, mountain) (wrote, whistled, towered) the (novel, steam, valley).
- The (gardener, owl, thunder) (planted, hooted, rumbled) the (bulbs, night, sky).
- The (blacksmith, envelope, river) (hammered, arrived, trickled) the (horseshoe, address, sea).
- The chef seasoned the soup. Take the verbs in turn: only a person can season something, and only soup among the three objects can be seasoned. A curtain can fade but it cannot fade sunlight, and a pebble can sink but it cannot sink a pond — both of those verbs need an object they cannot have here.
- The author wrote the novel. A kettle whistles and a mountain towers, but neither verb can be done to anything in the last group: nothing there can be whistled, and a mountain towers over a valley rather than towering it. Only wrote has someone to do it and something for it to be done to.
- The gardener planted the bulbs. An owl hoots in the night and thunder rumbles across the sky, and those pairings are the trap: the words belong together, but neither verb can be done to the word that follows it. Read back in full, the owl hooted the night and the thunder rumbled the sky are not things anyone would say.
- The blacksmith hammered the horseshoe. An envelope arrives at an address and a river trickles to the sea, but arrived and trickled cannot be done to anything, so neither fits a gap that runs straight on to the. Of the three things in the last group only the horseshoe can be hammered, and only the blacksmith is there to do it.
How much practice does this type need at home?
Two short sessions a week, and the useful exercise is spoken rather than written. Give your child three verbs and ask, for each one, who could do it and what it could be done to. No sentence, no answer to find.
That drill is the whole question type in miniature, and children who can do it fluently stop finding these hard almost immediately — because the twenty-seven combinations were never the problem. Choosing which three to test was.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why start with the middle group?
Because the verb answers two questions at once. What kind of thing could perform this action? That rules words out of the first group. What kind of thing could this action be performed on? That rules words out of the last. A verb that survives both tests is nearly always the answer, and usually you know within about fifteen seconds. Starting with the subject instead tells you almost nothing, because most subjects can do most things.
Does my child get anything for two out of three?
No. All three have to be right, which is why the order you work in matters so much — it is not a question that can be half-answered. That is worth saying plainly to a child, because it changes how carefully they check.
What if two combinations both seem to work?
Read both back in full, as complete sentences, and one will usually turn out to have the shape of a sentence without the sense of one. The pebble seasoned the sunlight is put together correctly and tells you nothing. The test is not whether the words fit together but whether the sentence means something in an ordinary, everyday setting.
How is this different from a cloze or missing word question?
A cloze question gives you a gap in a passage and asks for a word that fits the sense of the whole thing. This type gives you a fixed structure and three explicit choices at each point, so it is closer to elimination than to composition. The skill is testing candidates systematically rather than thinking of the right word.
Sources
- GL Assessment — 11+ familiarisation materials and question type descriptions Published 2025.
- Clever Clogs Academy — our own Year 4 and Year 5 lesson records, Winslow Published September 2025 to July 2026.
We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to GL Assessment or Buckinghamshire Council. Test arrangements change; always check the council's own pages for the current year's dates.
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