Grammar and Vocabulary
Grammar and Vocabulary (Domain 3) appears in two typical shapes: an editing or omission task, and discrete items on determiners, modals, prepositions, tense, voice, narration and word formation. The section is scored item by item, so precision beats fluency.
Editing and omission
In editing, one word in each numbered line is wrong; write the incorrect word and its correction. In omission, one word is missing; write it against the line together with the word before and after. Read the whole line, not the marked word. Errors cluster around subject–verb agreement, articles, prepositions and tense.
High-yield rules
- “One of” + plural noun + singular verb: “One of my friends is a doctor.”
- “Each”, “every”, “either”, “neither” take a singular verb.
- “Since” + point of time; “for” + duration.
- Reported speech shifts the tense back one step and changes pronouns and time markers.
- Passive voice preserves the tense in “be”: “He has written it” → “It has been written by him.”
Worked example
Item: “One of my friend is working in a bank.” Reasoning: the error lies inside the prepositional phrase; “one of” selects from a plural set, so “friend” must become “friends”. The verb “is” is already correct because it agrees with “one”, not with “friends”. Final: “One of my friends is working in a bank.” Notice the trap: the plural noun sits next to the verb, tempting you to “correct” the verb instead.
Traps
Correcting a word that is already right; changing two words in a one-error line; forgetting to rewrite the full corrected sentence where the rubric demands it; confusing its/it’s, your/you’re, affect/effect; and answering vocabulary items with a synonym that does not fit the sentence grammatically.