Verbal analogies: a parent's teaching guide
How to teach the verbal-analogy questions that power the CogAT, OLSAT, and SSAT/ISEE — with a simple naming trick.
'Bird is to sky as fish is to ___'. Verbal analogies test whether your child can spot the relationship between a pair of words and apply it. It's one of the most transferable test skills.
The trick: name the relationship
The fix for almost every analogy is to say the relationship in a short sentence. 'A bird lives in the sky' → so a fish lives in… water. Naming the link out loud turns a guessing game into logic.
Common relationship types
- Part to whole (finger : hand).
- Function (pen : write).
- Category (rose : flower).
- Opposite (hot : cold).
- Degree (warm : hot).
Build it daily
Vocabulary is the fuel — the more words your child knows precisely, the easier analogies become. Read together and talk about how words relate.
Common questions
Which tests use verbal analogies?
The CogAT verbal battery, the OLSAT, and the SSAT/ISEE all include analogy-style questions — so this one skill pays off across gifted and admissions testing.
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