This is a general overview of what children need to be able understand and apply in exam situations:
Involves your child assimilating large passages of information and answering questions based upon what they have read. This can be challenging for the child due to the time constraints placed upon them and the wording of the texts.
It is best to learn spellings that are commonly misspelt or tricky to learn such as words with silent letters in. Furthermore learn how to add the appropriate prefix and suffixes to words, learn compound words, and words which have double letters in there as well, as a lot of the more challenging words are utilised in the exam.
This is important in all factors of the English exam, but mainly comprehension and the creative writing. Your child needs to know how to use commas, colons, brackets, semi-colons, hyphens, full stops, and other punctuation, as this can come up in the comprehension text and then asked about in the question section. It also presents a strong impression in the creative writing aspect of the exam.
This mainly addresses the fact that when you write you should generally stick to the same tense and a similar tone. For example if you are writing a formal letter to complain, you must stick to the past tense and use a formal tone. It also addresses the actual make-up of the sentence, i.e. simple, compound, and complex sentences. When you write you should use a mixture of these structures to convey the correct tone.
The different segments of a sentence such as: the noun, adjective, verb, adverb, and clause, are different components of grammar. To do the 11+ you need a good understanding of grammar, this is so you can write coherently and you may need to pick out nouns etc in a comprehension task to use in an answer.
If you have a good vocabulary you can write stronger and a more flowing piece of creative writing as you will be less inclined to repeat words. Furthermore knowing your superlatives and comparatives can help with picking out key words in texts and when writing an argument or a persuasive piece. So a strong vocabulary is a must for success.
So this is effectively creative writing, which can be writing an argument, writing to persuade, writing to explain, writing instructions, writing a narrative etc… Everything mentioned above apart from the comprehension will be involved when you have to do a creative piece.
It is important to note that the core of English is grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Once your child understands this to a sufficient degree, they will be successful at all aspects of English.