Vocabulary
What the section tests
Vocabulary questions check whether you know word meanings, opposites, word families, collocations, and how words are used in context. Grade 7 lists include everyday topics - school, travel, health, environment, feelings - plus common phrasal verbs and prefixes/suffixes.
Concepts you must know
- Synonyms and antonyms: choose the closest meaning, not just a related idea.
- Word families: care, careful, carefully, careless, carelessness - the gap decides the form.
- Collocations: natural partners such as make a decision, take part, heavy rain.
- Affixes: un-, dis-, re-, -ful, -less, -ment change meaning or part of speech.
- Phrasal verbs: give up, look after, turn down - meaning is not obvious from parts.
Traps in questions
Look-alike words (affect/effect, borrow/lend) and near-synonyms with different grammar (say/tell) are frequent traps. Another is the option that fits the meaning but not the grammar: after very you need an adjective, not an adverb. Context can also flip a familiar word - a run in her tights is not exercise.
Worked example
"The teacher was ___ with our project." Options: please / pleasant / pleased / pleasing. The pattern be ___ with needs an adjective describing a person's feeling, so pleased is correct. Rule of thumb: check three things for every option - meaning, part of speech, and the words that surround the gap.
Preparation
Keep a topic vocabulary notebook, record collocations with each new word, and test yourself with gap-fill sentences.