Grammar and sentence-level accuracy
Sentence-level accuracy covers the grammar that appears in gap-fill and transformation items: tense and aspect, subject–verb agreement, articles and quantifiers, conditionals, modal verbs, relative clauses, gerund versus infinitive, and pronoun reference. In transformation items the rule is absolute: the new sentence must mean the same as the original, using the structure or word the prompt gives you.
High-frequency structures
- Present perfect vs past simple: I have lived here since 2019 (unfinished) versus I lived there in 2019 (finished time).
- Conditionals: If I knew, I would tell you (2nd, unreal present); If I had known, I would have come (3rd, regret about the past).
- Modals: must (obligation or strong deduction), should (advice), might (possibility), can't (negative deduction).
- Gerund or infinitive: enjoy doing, avoid doing, decide to do, look forward to doing, be used to doing versus used to do.
- Relative clauses: who for people, which for things, whose for possession; never repeat the object pronoun (the book which I bought it ✗).
- Agreement: The number of students is rising versus A number of students are against it.
Worked transformation
Original: 'In spite of the rain, the match continued.' Prompt: 'Although ___.' Answer: 'Although it was raining, the match continued.' Reasoning: in spite of is a preposition and takes a noun phrase; although is a conjunction and needs a full clause with a subject and a finite verb. The contrast and the main clause must survive unchanged, so the rewrite adds a subject (it) and a verb (was raining) rather than altering the meaning.
Traps
- I am agree, people is, informations, advices - agreement and countability.
- depend of, married with, in the last years.
- the most easiest, more better - double comparison.
- I have seen him yesterday - finished-time adverbs force the past simple.
- In transformations, adding or dropping a word that changes the meaning, or writing two words where the rubric allows one.