Two Marks per Item: Inversion, Collocation and Triage Under Six Minutes
Independent written-language classroom exercise. The stated times, task format and marking priorities are hypothetical practice constraints, not current Czech official rules. No audio is supplied. The candidate is three items from the end of the key-word transformation section, where each item carries two marks (one for the grammatical structure, one for accuracy of the whole sentence). Six minutes remain. Her three attempts are:
- Target: 'Immediately after the announcement, shares fell sharply.' Key word: SOONER. Her answer: 'No sooner the announcement was made than shares fell sharply.'
- Target: 'The committee dealt with the proposal very quickly and rejected it.' Key word: SHORT. Her answer: 'The committee took short work of the proposal.'
- Target: 'The two proposals are essentially identical.' Key word: DIFFERENCE. Her answer: 'There is no difference among the two proposals.'
She is confident about all three and intends to use the remaining six minutes to check spelling. She has written nothing on the reverse of the page for planning.
1. Item 1: diagnose the errors and write the correct answer, explaining why each feature is compulsory.
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Correct answer: 'No sooner had the announcement been made than shares fell sharply.'
Error 1 - missing inversion. 'No sooner' is a negative-meaning adverbial in front position, which triggers subject–auxiliary inversion in the main clause: had the announcement been made, not the announcement was made. This is not stylistic. With fronted negatives (no sooner, hardly, scarcely, not only, under no circumstances), inversion is grammatically required.
Error 2 - wrong tense sequence. The conventional transformation answer here pairs past perfect (the first event) with past simple after than (the second): No sooner had X happened than Y happened. She used past simple twice, which loses the sequencing that 'sooner' encodes. Note also the fixed correlative: no sooner … than, never no sooner … when.
Error 3 - voice. 'The announcement was made' must become 'had the announcement been made' - the auxiliary that inverts is the first auxiliary of the passive.
Marking consequence. Under a two-mark scheme this item loses both marks: the structure mark for the absence of inversion, and the accuracy mark for the tense. Partial credit is not available for 'nearly inverted'.
2. Item 2: the grammar of her answer is sound, yet it scores zero. Explain why, and state what skill the item is testing.
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Use: The committee made short work of the proposal and rejected it. The fixed expression is make short work of something, describing rapid or efficient handling. It does not by itself necessarily mean rejection, so the added rejected it preserves the original meaning. Took short work of does not supply the intended idiom. The exercise tests a collocation as well as retention of the complete source meaning; a shorter answer that silently drops rejection is not automatically equivalent.
3. Item 3 contains a different kind of error. Identify it, correct it, and then set out how she should spend the remaining six minutes across all three items.
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For these two proposals, between is the natural relational preposition. Between is not restricted to exactly two items, and among is not defined merely by a count of three or more. To preserve essentially identical without strengthening it to perfect identity, write: There is essentially no difference between the two proposals. Use the remaining time to check inversion, the complete fixed collocation, meaning preservation, spelling and the actual task’s stated limits. The proposed sequence is a practice strategy, not an official marking guarantee.