Language and Vocabulary
What this domain asks you to do
These questions test how well you decode unfamiliar words and apply language conventions. Two skill families appear: vocabulary in context (context clues, morphology, connotation, figurative and academic language) and standard English conventions (usage, punctuation, sentence structure, spelling).
Concepts to master
- Context clues: definition, example, contrast, and cause–effect signals within the sentence or nearby sentences.
- Morphology: common roots and affixes (bene-, mal-, -cred-, -ject-, un-, re-, -tion, -ous) that let you break a word into meaning parts.
- Connotation and precision: choose the word that fits both the meaning and the tone of the sentence.
- Reference skills: dictionary entries, thesauri, and glossaries, including part-of-speech labels and multiple numbered senses.
- Conventions: subject–verb agreement, pronoun–antecedent agreement, verb tense consistency, comma and semicolon use, and complete sentences.
Traps the test sets
Picking a familiar definition that does not fit the sentence; ignoring the part of speech a blank requires; missing a shift in verb tense; using a comma to join two complete sentences; treating an idiom literally; choosing a synonym with the wrong connotation.
Rule of thumb and worked example
Cover the word, read the sentence, predict a word of your own, then match. Predicting first prevents the choices from steering you.
Example: The committee's decision was unilateral, made without consulting any other department. The contrast clue without consulting any other signals that unilateral means one-sided. An answer like fair would be plausible-sounding but contradicts the clue. For a blank requiring a verb, immediately eliminate choices that are nouns or adjectives - that single filter often removes two options.