Textual Grammar / Transformation
What the domain tests
These items take sentences from the prescribed texts and ask you to rewrite them as directed: voice change, reported speech, simple/compound/complex conversion, degree change, joining with relative clauses, question tags and fixed patterns such as too…to, unless, no sooner…than.
Core rules and concepts
- Voice: keep the tense, swap subject and object, and use the correct participle - is taken, was taken, has been taken, had been taken, will be taken, is being taken. Intransitive verbs have no passive.
- Reported speech: backshift the tense when the reporting verb is past, shift pronouns to the reporter's viewpoint, and shift time and place words (now→then, today→that day, here→there, this→that). Must becomes had to when it expresses obligation; must stays when it expresses deduction.
- Simple/compound/complex: compound uses coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, so); complex uses a subordinate clause (because, although, when, who, which, that).
- Fixed patterns: too…to = so…that…not; unless = if…not; as soon as = no sooner…than = hardly…when, with inversion in the first clause.
Worked example
Sentence: 'As soon as the bell rang, the boys rushed out.' Reasoning: 'as soon as' signals the no sooner…than pattern. The first clause goes into past perfect with subject-verb inversion - 'No sooner had the bell rung' - and the second clause keeps the simple past: 'than the boys rushed out.' The two errors to avoid are writing when or then instead of than, and leaving the normal word order 'No sooner the bell had rung'.
A reported-speech version: M. Hamel said to the class, 'You must not forget the French language.' → M. Hamel told the class that they must not forget the French language, with the pronoun shifted and the reporting verb changed to told.
Traps that cost marks
- Than confused with when or then in the no sooner/hardly patterns.
- Forgetting inversion after no sooner or hardly.
- Failing to backshift tense, or double-backshifting into an impossible form.
- Changing the tense of the original while transforming voice.