Similes, metaphors and more for 11 plus English

Figurative language says one thing to mean another. A simile compares, using like or as: her words came out like a flood. A metaphor says something is something else: the classroom was a zoo. Personification gives a thing a human action: the wind whispered. Alliteration repeats the first sound: silver snakes slid. To read any of them, say it in plain words.

The classroom was a zoo. That is a metaphor. What is a zoo like? Noisy, wild, everyone moving. So in plain words: the classroom was loud and out of control. And the effect: we can hear and see the chaos.

The trap is reading it as fact. An answer about animals, or about a school trip to the zoo, takes the picture literally.

• 1.1Finding the answer in the textFind it, then check it
• 1.2Reading between the linesNo clue, no answer
• 1.3Characters and why they actWhat they do, and why they do it
• 1.4What a word means in the passageSwap it in, read it back
• 1.5Why the writer did itSay what it does to the reader
• 1.7Order and structureFind the event, then look either side
• 1.8Reading an older textFind the main sentence, then put old words into today's words

Every 11 plus English topic