Vocabulary and Word Usage
Vocabulary and Word Usage tests whether you can pick the one word that fits a particular sentence - not simply a word you happen to recognise. Task types include sentence completion, choosing a synonym that preserves the original meaning, selecting the correct member of a word family, and identifying the word that does not fit. Marks are lost on precision, because connotation, collocation, register and grammatical fit must all be satisfied at once.
What the item writer is checking
- Connotation. Slim, thin and gaunt describe the same build but carry neutral, mildly negative and strongly negative colouring. Childlike is approving; childish is not.
- Collocation. English fixes many partnerships: heavy rain, strong tea, make a decision, do research, commit an offence. A synonym that is grammatically possible can still be collocationally wrong - do a mistake fails where make a mistake works.
- Register. Kids, stuff and get across belong in conversation, not in a formal report.
- Word families and confusables. Advice/advise, practice/practise, affect/effect, economic/economical, historic/historical.
- Phrasal verbs. Put off (postpone), put up with (tolerate), turn down (reject) usually have a single Latinate equivalent that suits formal writing better.
Worked example
The committee's report ______ the need for clearer procedures, although it stopped short of proposing new rules.
Options: inferred / implied / referred / conferred
Reasoning: the report is the source of the suggestion, so it implies; a reader infers. Refer requires to before an object, and confer means to consult or to grant. The concessive although clause confirms a weak, unstated suggestion - exactly the sense of imply.
Traps that cost marks
- Reaching for the rarest word; examiners reward fit, not difficulty.
- Transferring a false friend from your first language.
- Ignoring grammatical fit - the gap may demand a noun, a plural, or a word followed by a fixed preposition (depend on, comply with, consist of).
- Reading only up to the gap; the decisive clue often sits in the clause after it.
- Choosing a synonym with the wrong strength: warm is not hot, criticise is not condemn.