Language Use: Grammar and Vocabulary
The language use part (keelekasutus) tests grammar and vocabulary inside short texts rather than as isolated rules: you complete a cloze, choose between similar words, change word forms, and put verbs into the right tense. Typical tasks are a multiple-choice cloze, an open gap-fill and a word-formation exercise.
Grammar that repeatedly appears
- Present simple vs present continuous: habits and facts vs actions happening now and fixed future arrangements.
- Past simple vs present perfect: a finished past time (yesterday, in 2019) vs a result now or experience with no time given (ever, since, for).
- Articles: a/an for first mention and for jobs; the for something already known; no article with general plurals.
- Comparatives and superlatives, including irregulars (better, worse, the best).
- Conditionals: If + present simple, will; If + past simple, would.
- Passive: be + past participle.
- Questions and negatives with do/does/did.
- Preposition collocations: good at, interested in, depend on, listen to.
Word formation
Decide what the gap needs: a noun (decision, happiness), an adjective (careful, dangerous), an adverb (carefully, easily) or a negative form (un-, in-, dis-). Then check whether the noun must be plural or the adjective comparative.
Worked example
“If I ___ (have) more free time, I would join the school band.” The main clause uses “would join”, so this is an unreal present situation - the second conditional - and the if-clause takes the past simple. Answer: had. Writing “have” is the trap: it fits the meaning but breaks the structure. A second quick check: “She sings very ___ (beautiful)” needs an adverb because it describes the verb, so beautifully, not beautiful.
Traps that cost marks
- Third-person -s in the present simple (she go → she goes).
- “Since” with a point in time, “for” with a length of time.
- Uncountable nouns: information, advice, news, furniture - no plural -s.
- Spelling changes in word formation: happy → happiness, easy → easily, big → bigger.
- Copying the word in brackets unchanged instead of forming the required part of speech.
- Reading only the gap sentence: the tense is often decided by the sentence before it.