Vocabulary, Idioms and Word Usage
Vocabulary items in this paper are rarely isolated glosses. You are asked to choose the right word for a context, supply an antonym or synonym, complete a collocation, or explain an idiom. Persian builds words predictably, and idioms are fixed - neither can be guessed from a dictionary alone.
Word building
Prefixes: na- and bi- (negation/without), ham- (co-), bāz- (re-), nā- (un-). Suffixes: -i forms abstract nouns (dānesh → dāneshi? no - dānesh is already a noun; Irān → Irāni), -gar (doer), -mand (having), -gāh (place), -estān (land of). Learn one family at a time: kār, kārgar, kārgāh, kārdān.
Idioms are blocks
dast-e kasi rā gereftan = to help someone; del-am gereft = I am fed up; sar-e kāri raftan = to go to work; chashm-ash āb oftād = he wept. Meaning comes from the whole phrase, not the parts.
Collocation and prepositions
Verbs select their prepositions: bā kasi sohbat kardan (talk with), be kasi komak kardan (help someone), az chizi tarsidan (fear something). Wrong preposition = wrong answer.
Worked example
Choose between be and bā: 'He telephoned my friend.' The verb telefon kardan takes be: U be dust-am telefon kard. Change the verb to sohbat kardan and the preposition changes to bā. That shift is what the item is testing.
Traps
Translating idioms word-for-word; assuming an Arabic loanword means what the Odia or English cognate suggests; using -hā with an Arabic broken plural already in the plural; swapping prepositions between verbs of similar meaning.