Lexis and vocabulary in context
Vocabulary is tested in two places: inside the reading questions (word in context, synonym matching) and in the Use of English items (gap fill, word formation, collocation). What is measured is not translation knowledge but whether you know how a word behaves - which words it combines with, which preposition it takes, which word class the gap requires and whether its register fits.
What 'knowing a word' means here
- Collocation: make a decision, do research, heavy rain, strong coffee, take part in, pay attention to.
- Dependent prepositions: depend on, interested in, good at, afraid of, succeed in, accused of.
- Word formation: prefixes (un-, in-, im-, dis-, mis-, over-) and suffixes (-ment, -ness, -tion, -ity, -ance, -ful, -less, -ive), plus internal spelling changes (succeed → success, explain → explanation, happy → happiness).
- Phrasal verbs: put off (postpone), turn down (reject), call off (cancel), give up (quit), look forward to + -ing.
- False friends: actually = in fact; assist = help; sensible = reasonable; library = biblioteca; eventually = finally; attend = go to.
Worked items
- 'The council decided to ___ the trip because of the storm.' a) call off b) call for c) call on d) call up. Answer: a. Reasoning: 'because of the storm' supplies a cancellation cause, and only call off means cancel; the others mean demand, visit/invite and telephone/recruit.
- 'Her ___ (DECIDE) surprised the whole team.' → decision. Reasoning: the possessive her plus the verb surprised means the gap needs a noun subject, and decide forms decision with the -sion spelling.
Traps
- Choosing an option because it sounds like a Spanish or Catalan word.
- Looking only at the gap and not at the word after it - a dependent preposition often fixes the answer.
- Right root, wrong class: success / successful / successfully.
- Forgetting spelling changes in derived forms.
- Ignoring the tense or register of the sentence around the gap.