Year 6 English Practice Questions and Topics
Year 6 English (ages 10–11) is primary school's exam-preparation year, consolidating everything from Years 3–5 while adding a few genuinely new ideas: active and passive voice (the difference between "the dog bit the man" and "the man was bitten by the dog"), and formal versus informal register — recognising and choosing appropriate tone and vocabulary for a given audience or purpose. Punctuation, clause structure, word classes, figurative language and cohesion are all revisited and expected at a more confident, independent level, and spelling covers the full range of patterns a primary-school child is expected to know.
By the end of Year 6, a child should convert a sentence between active and passive voice, identify whether a piece of writing is formal or informal and explain why, use a full range of punctuation (commas, apostrophes, speech marks, colons and semicolons in simple contexts) accurately, and write with clear, consistent cohesion across several paragraphs.
The most common difficulty is passive voice — constructing it correctly (adding the right form of "to be" and adjusting the verb) is a genuinely fiddly grammatical transformation that many children find counter-intuitive, since it reorders a sentence in a way that doesn't match how they'd naturally choose to say it. The second frequent struggle is formal/informal register in a child's own writing: recognising the difference when reading someone else's writing is usually manageable, but consistently applying an appropriate register throughout an entire piece of their own writing — not slipping into casual phrasing halfway through — takes real practice.
Year 6 is the culmination of primary English, and performance here has a direct bearing on secondary school setting decisions; more importantly, the close reading, inference and structural analysis skills built this year are exactly what Year 7 assumes as a starting point, not something it re-teaches.
Parents can help most by asking a child to rewrite a sentence in the opposite voice as a quick, regular exercise, and by discussing register directly when reading different types of text together — a text message, a letter, a newspaper article — asking what makes each one formal or informal, and why that choice fits its purpose.
10 topics · 100 practice questions available
Topics covered
Y6e Active Passive
10 questionsY6e Active Passive
Y6e Formal Informal
10 questionsY6e Formal Informal
Y6e Punctuation
10 questionsY6e Punctuation
Y6e Clauses
10 questionsY6e Clauses
Y6e Word Classes
10 questionsY6e Word Classes
Y6e Vocabulary
10 questionsY6e Vocabulary
Y6e Figurative
10 questionsY6e Figurative
Y6e Spelling
10 questionsY6e Spelling
Y6e Comprehension
10 questionsY6e Comprehension
Y6e Cohesion
10 questionsY6e Cohesion
Sample questions by topic
18 sample questions across every topic above — a small slice of the full bank, with the answer and full explanation shown for each.
Y6e Active Passive
Which sentence is in the active voice?
- The ball was chased.
- The ball was chased by the dog.
- The ball had been chased.
- The dog chased the ball.✓ Correct
Why: The subject (the dog) does the action.
Make passive: 'The chef cooked the meal.'
- The chef was cooked by the meal.
- Cooking the meal, the chef.
- The meal was cooked by the chef.✓ Correct
- The meal cooked the chef.
Why: The object becomes the subject in the passive.
Which sentence is passive?
- Mistakes were made during the experiment.✓ Correct
- We made mistakes.
- Making mistakes is normal.
- The team made mistakes.
Why: It does not say who made the mistakes.
Which passive sentence keeps the doer?
- The bridge was designed.
- The bridge was designed by an engineer.✓ Correct
- The bridge had been designed.
- The bridge was being designed.
Why: By an engineer names the doer.
Y6e Formal Informal
Which is more formal?
- I would like to request✓ Correct
- can I get
- gimme
- I wanna ask
Why: Would like to request is formal.
Which is the formal version of 'find out'?
- suss out
- discover✓ Correct
- dig up
- check out
Why: Discover is the formal equivalent.
What is the subjunctive form in: 'If I ___ you, I would apologise.'
- was
- am
- were✓ Correct
- be
Why: The subjunctive uses were for hypothetical situations.
Which sentence is the most formal?
- Give us a shout if stuck.
- Should you require assistance, please notify a member of staff.✓ Correct
- If you need help, tell someone.
- Need help? Ask us.
Why: It uses inversion and formal vocabulary.
Y6e Punctuation
What does a semicolon do?
- ends a question
- introduces speech
- shows possession
- joins two closely related complete sentences✓ Correct
Why: A semicolon links two independent clauses.
Which sentence uses a semicolon correctly?
- It was late; we went home.✓ Correct
- It was late; and we went home.
- It was late; because tired.
- It was; late we went home.
Why: Both sides are complete sentences.
Which sentence needs a semicolon rather than a comma?
- The rain stopped; the sun appeared.✓ Correct
- When it rained, we stopped.
- We took coats, hats and boots.
- Although it rained, we went out.
Why: Two complete sentences joined without a conjunction need a semicolon.
Which sentence is punctuated correctly?
- We visited: Rome, Italy; Paris, France, and Bonn Germany.
- We visited Rome; Italy, Paris; France, Bonn; Germany.
- We visited Rome, Italy; Paris, France; and Bonn, Germany.✓ Correct
- We visited Rome, Italy, Paris, France, and Bonn, Germany;
Why: Semicolons separate items that already contain commas.
Y6e Clauses
In 'Although it rained, we played on', which is the subordinate clause?
- it rained we
- Although it rained✓ Correct
- played on although
- we played on
Why: It cannot stand alone.
What is a relative clause?
- a list
- a clause that gives a command
- a clause that describes a noun✓ Correct
- a clause with no verb
Why: It adds information about a noun.
Y6e Word Classes
What is a synonym for a word class that names things?
- adverb
- preposition
- noun✓ Correct
- verb
Why: Nouns name people, places and things.
What is an expanded noun phrase?
- a verb with an adverb
- a question
- two clauses joined
- a noun with added describing words✓ Correct
Why: For example, the tall, ancient oak tree.
Y6e Vocabulary
What does RESILIENT mean?
- easily broken
- unfriendly
- very slow
- able to recover quickly✓ Correct
Why: Resilient means bouncing back from difficulty.
Y6e Figurative
What does the idiom 'bite the bullet' mean?
- to shoot a gun
- to face something difficult bravely✓ Correct
- to eat quickly
- to break your teeth
Why: It means to endure something painful.
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