Two Marks per Item: Inversion, Collocation and Triage Under Six Minutes
The candidate is three items from the end of the key-word transformation section, where each item carries two marks (one for the grammatical structure, one for accuracy of the whole sentence). Six minutes remain. Her three attempts are:
- Target: 'Immediately after the announcement, shares fell sharply.' Key word: SOONER. Her answer: 'No sooner the announcement was made than shares fell sharply.'
- Target: 'The committee dealt with the proposal very quickly and rejected it.' Key word: SHORT. Her answer: 'The committee took short work of the proposal.'
- Target: 'The two proposals are essentially identical.' Key word: DIFFERENCE. Her answer: 'There is no difference among the two proposals.'
She is confident about all three and intends to use the remaining six minutes to check spelling. She has written nothing on the reverse of the page for planning.
1. Item 1: diagnose the errors and write the correct answer, explaining why each feature is compulsory.
Read the worked answer
Correct answer: 'No sooner had the announcement been made than shares fell sharply.'
Error 1 - missing inversion. 'No sooner' is a negative-meaning adverbial in front position, which triggers subject–auxiliary inversion in the main clause: had the announcement been made, not the announcement was made. This is not stylistic. With fronted negatives (no sooner, hardly, scarcely, not only, under no circumstances), inversion is grammatically required.
Error 2 - wrong tense sequence. The construction pairs past perfect (the first event) with past simple after than (the second): No sooner had X happened than Y happened. She used past simple twice, which loses the sequencing that 'sooner' encodes. Note also the fixed correlative: no sooner … than, never no sooner … when.
Error 3 - voice. 'The announcement was made' must become 'had the announcement been made' - the auxiliary that inverts is the first auxiliary of the passive.
Marking consequence. Under a two-mark scheme this item loses both marks: the structure mark for the absence of inversion, and the accuracy mark for the tense. Partial credit is not available for 'nearly inverted'.
2. Item 2: the grammar of her answer is sound, yet it scores zero. Explain why, and state what skill the item is testing.
Read the worked answer
Correct answer: 'The committee made short work of the proposal.'
Her sentence violates the fixed expression. The collocation is make short work of something - to deal with it swiftly and decisively. Take short work does not exist in English; there is no productive rule that generates it, and no amount of grammatical checking will catch the error, because 'took short work of' is perfectly well-formed syntax attached to a non-existent idiom.
What the item is testing. Not grammar alone but the ability to recognise that the key word is a fragment of a fixed phrase and to retrieve the phrase whole. When a key word is a common noun in an idiom, the correct answer is almost always the idiom; paraphrase is the trap.
The diagnostic habit to install. When the key word cannot be slotted in as a normal lexical substitution, ask: does this word live inside a phrase? Short collocates with work, supply, cut, lived, of breath, in the short term. The transformation target ('dealt with quickly and rejected') points directly at 'made short work of', and made is one of the highest-frequency collocates of short work.
Second error she missed. 'Rejected' is carried by 'made short work of' only by implication. Either accept the implication or restructure: 'The committee made short work of the proposal and threw it out.' The version above is the safer, tighter answer.
3. Item 3 contains a different kind of error. Identify it, correct it, and then set out how she should spend the remaining six minutes across all three items.
Read the worked answer
Error: 'among' with two items. Among requires three or more; with exactly two, English requires between. Correct answer: 'There is no difference between the two proposals.' (The target's 'essentially' is absorbed by 'no difference', which is stronger and therefore acceptable; 'essentially no difference' is also possible but less clean.)
This is the third distinct error type in three items - structure, collocation, and a grammaticalised misuse of a preposition of quantity. That pattern is itself diagnostic: she is answering fast and checking spelling, not checking category.
Six-minute allocation:
- 0:00–1:30 - Item 1: rewrite with inversion and past perfect. Highest-value fix, two marks recoverable, and the rule is mechanical.
- 1:30–2:30 - Item 2: replace with made short work of. Instant, no deliberation needed once the idiom is retrieved.
- 2:30–3:15 - Item 3: change among to between.
- 3:15–5:30 - Read all three completed sentences aloud in the head, end to end. Transformation items are marked on the whole sentence; a correct structure with a dropped article still loses the accuracy mark.
- 5:30–6:00 - Confirm word limits and that the key word is unaltered (no added -s or -ed).
What she should stop doing: checking spelling. Spelling is the least likely cause of lost marks here; category errors are the cause, and they are found by asking 'what kind of item is this?' before writing.