Core: Grammar and Vocabulary
The Core section tests grammar and vocabulary through short, discrete items. You will see sentence-completion tasks, matching words to gaps, and synonym or collocation questions. The grammar tested is functional rather than obscure: present simple versus present continuous, past simple versus present perfect, comparatives and superlatives, conditionals (especially first and second), modals of obligation and possibility, question formation, prepositions, and articles.
What to master
- Tense choice driven by time markers. Words like yesterday, since, already, every day and at the moment usually decide the answer.
- Word families and collocations. Learn verbs and nouns as partners: make a decision, take part, pay attention.
- Meaning in context. A synonym question rewards the word that fits the sentence, not the most impressive word.
Traps to watch
- A distractor that is grammatically possible but wrong for the time marker (I have seen him yesterday).
- Similar-looking words with different meanings (borrow/lend, affect/effect).
- Prepositions after common adjectives and verbs (interested in, depend on, good at).
- Options that repeat a word from the sentence but do not fit the meaning.
Rule of thumb
Read the whole sentence before choosing. Ask two questions: What time is it? and Who does what to whom? If an option fails either test, it is wrong even if it sounds familiar.
Worked example
She ___ in Manchester since 2019. Options: lives / is living / has lived / lived. The marker since signals a situation continuing to now, so the present perfect has lived is correct. Lived would need a finished time such as in 2019.