FY13CE English common mistakes
FY13CE English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Choosing a vocabulary answer by sound or familiarity - picking the word that 'looks like' the right one because it resembles a word in the candidate's first language or a word seen recently - instead of checking whether its meaning and part of speech fit the sentence.
The exam tests near-synonyms and confusable pairs (e.g., affect/effect, economic/economical, sensible/sensitive). Recognition memory fires first on the familiar-looking option, and candidates stop checking once they feel recognition, so collocation and register never get tested.
What to do instead
Before selecting, cover the options, read the sentence, and predict a word and its part of speech. Then test each option by (a) part of speech and (b) collocation - say the full phrase aloud or write it out. Reject any option that fits only in meaning but not in grammar, and any option that fits only because it resembles a word from another language.
Answering grammar items by ear - choosing whichever option 'sounds right' in isolation - without locating the subject, the main verb, and the clause boundaries of the sentence first.
Spoken fluency habits and first-language transfer produce sentences that sound acceptable but violate written agreement, tense sequence, or punctuation rules. Under time pressure, the ear answers before the structure is parsed.
What to do instead
Bracket the clauses, underline the finite verb, and draw an arrow to its subject before reading the options. Check agreement across intervening phrases, check that every subordinate clause has its own subject and verb, and only then compare options. Practise on sentences with long subjects and inserted prepositional phrases, which are the ones the ear fails on.
Reading the passage first and the questions second, then hunting for keywords in the text and selecting the option whose wording most closely echoes the passage.
Keyword matching feels efficient, but distractors are deliberately built by copying passage wording while changing a qualifier, a scope word, or the direction of a relationship. The option that repeats the most words is often the trap.
What to do instead
Skim the questions for the type of information required, then read the passage once for structure (what each paragraph does). Answer by locating the relevant sentence and paraphrasing it in your own words before looking at the options. Eliminate any option containing an absolute (all, never, only, must) unless the passage states it absolutely, and any option that adds a cause, comparison, or opinion the passage does not make.
Treating 'according to the passage' and 'what can be inferred' questions identically, and choosing an inference that is merely plausible in real life rather than one the text actually supports.
Candidates import background knowledge, especially on familiar topics, and mistake a reasonable real-world conclusion for a textual inference. The distinction between stated detail, implication, and personal opinion is not made explicit during practice.
What to do instead
For detail questions, point to the exact line and check it says what the option says. For inference questions, require a two-step justification: name the sentence(s) that force the conclusion and state the logical link. If the justification needs information from outside the passage, the option is wrong regardless of how true it is.
Writing an essay or letter with no planning step: starting at the first sentence, producing a list of related points in the order they occur, and ending with a one-line summary that repeats the introduction.
Timed writing rewards visible output, so planning feels like lost minutes. Without a plan, paragraphs lack topic sentences and the argument drifts, which costs marks for organisation and coherence even when the language is accurate.
What to do instead
Spend three to five minutes on a skeleton: thesis in one sentence, two or three body points each with one supporting example, and a conclusion that states the consequence of the thesis rather than restating it. Give every paragraph a topic sentence that a reader could outline from. Reserve the last few minutes to check subject-verb agreement, articles, and tense consistency, which are the errors most often penalised in composition marking.
In listening sections, writing the answer while the recording is still playing, then missing the next two items; or answering from the first mention of a number, name, or date.
Candidates try to transcribe full sentences rather than note keywords, and the recording does not pause. Speakers also self-correct ('at three - sorry, half past three'), so the first number heard is frequently the distractor.
What to do instead
Write only abbreviations and numbers during the audio, and complete the answer in the pause. Listen for correction markers (actually, sorry, I mean, rather) and for contrast markers (but, however, although) and treat what follows them as the answer. Preview the questions before each section so you know which type of information to listen for, and never leave a blank - an inferred guess costs nothing.
In oral tasks, memorising a scripted answer and delivering it regardless of the question, or freezing into silence when a word is unknown instead of paraphrasing around it.
Prepared scripts feel safe, but examiners ask follow-up questions, and a rehearsed answer that does not address the prompt scores low on relevance and interaction. Silence under lexical gaps is a fluency killer, and hesitation markers are often penalised more heavily than a simple paraphrase.
What to do instead
Prepare topic frameworks (opinion, reason, example, counterpoint) rather than sentences, and practise them on unseen prompts. Build a paraphrase habit: describe the unknown word ('the thing you use to...', 'a kind of...') and keep the sentence moving. Record yourself, then listen for fillers, flat intonation, and sentences that trail off, and rehearse linking phrases that buy thinking time naturally.
In speaking, producing grammatically correct but flat, monotone delivery with no stress on the information-bearing words, and pausing in the middle of thought groups rather than between them.
Candidates focus entirely on accuracy and treat pronunciation as a matter of individual sounds. Chunking and sentence stress carry meaning in English, and misplaced pauses make even accurate speech hard to follow, which lowers intelligibility scores.
What to do instead
Mark thought groups and stress in a short passage and read it aloud, pausing only at the marks. Practise contrastive stress on the same sentence ('I didn't say that', 'I didn't say that') to hear how meaning shifts. Record and compare against a model, focusing on word stress in multi-syllable words and on final consonants, which are the features most often lost.
Translating word for word, preserving source-language word order and idiom, and producing a target sentence that is grammatical but unnatural or ambiguous.
Literal translation is the default under time pressure, and idioms, collocations, and passive constructions rarely map one-to-one. Candidates also translate fixed expressions compositionally, producing meaning that is wrong rather than merely awkward.
What to do instead
Read the whole source sentence, identify its proposition and function (statement, request, warning), then write the target sentence from that meaning without looking back at the source. Compare the two only at the end. Build a bank of non-compositional expressions in both directions, and check target-language collocations and verb patterns rather than assuming the source pattern transfers.
In interpretation tasks, rendering numbers, names, dates, and negations approximately, or dropping a qualifier because it came late in the segment.
Working memory is consumed by the incoming speech, so the last clause and any figure are the first things lost. Negations and hedges ('not necessarily', 'unless', 'only if') are short and easy to omit, yet they invert or limit the meaning.
What to do instead
Note figures and proper nouns on paper in the source language as they arrive, and note negation words explicitly rather than relying on memory. Practise consecutive interpretation in short segments, then lengthen them, always checking that the number of propositions in the target matches the source. After delivering, self-check for dropped negations and qualifiers, which are the highest-cost omissions.