Lexical and grammatical competence (use of English)
This part rewards control rather than ambition. Typical tasks are sentence transformation («rewrite so that the meaning stays the same», often with a given opening or word), gap-fill or cloze, word formation and synonym matching. Marks are awarded per item and a half-right transformation scores zero, so the safest answer is the one you can fully verify against the original sentence.
Transformation patterns that recur
- Passive: object becomes subject, tense preserved, agent with by only if relevant. Watch agreement: «The bridge was destroyed by the storm».
- Reported speech: backshift one tense (present → past, will → would, can → could), shift pronouns and time markers (today → that day, tomorrow → the following day). Reported questions keep statement order: «He asked where I was going».
- Conditionals: «I didn't know, so I didn't call» → «If I had known, I would have called». Unless → if … not.
- Contrast: although + clause / despite + noun or -ing / however + comma. Never despite of.
- Degree and result: too … to / not … enough; so + adjective + that / such + (a) + noun + that.
- Causative and impersonal: have something done; It is said that he… / He is said to ….
- Relative clauses: whose for possession, where for places, never that after a comma.
Word formation and cloze
Decide the word class the gap needs first (noun, adjective, adverb), then build it: succeed → success, happy → happiness, care → careful / careless. Negative prefixes are irregular: in-, im- before m/p/b, ir- before r, il- before l, plus un- and dis-. In cloze items, read the whole sentence: collocation and subject–verb agreement decide more gaps than meaning does.
Worked example
Prompt: «She started working here five years ago.» Rewrite beginning «She has …». Reasoning: ago with past simple points to a present-perfect rewrite with for. The action continues, so the continuous form is the most natural: «She has been working here for five years». «She has worked here for five years» is also accepted; «She has started working here for five years» is wrong because it changes the meaning.
Traps that cost marks
- Dropping a negative or a time marker, which silently changes the meaning.
- Missing the backshift in reported speech.
- Adding or removing words beyond the given opening.
- Spelling in word formation: begining, succesful, enviroment - these are free marks lost.