Textual Grammar and Vocabulary Applied to Prescribed Texts
These items take their sentences from the prescribed prose, poems and play, so the grammar and vocabulary tested are tied to the register of a specific lesson: the formal argument of an essay, the conversational exchanges of a one-act play, the compressed diction of a poem.
What is tested
- Phrasal verbs and idioms drawn from the lessons.
- Word forms: noun/adjective/verb conversions of words that appear in the text.
- Voice and speech transformations of lines from the drama or prose.
- Linkers and sentence frames: although, in spite of, so…that, no sooner…than.
How to prepare, efficiently
Keep a lesson-wise table of eight to ten phrasal verbs and idioms, each with one sentence of your own and a note on register. Learn phrasal verbs in families, since the particle carries the meaning: call off (cancel), call on (visit), call for (demand), call up (telephone or summon).
Worked example
Sentence: The strike was called off after the talks. Question: replace the underlined phrasal verb with a single word. Answer: cancelled. Reasoning: call off is separable and transitive; with a pronoun the object must sit between verb and particle - call it off, never call off it. Contrast put off (postpone) with put out (extinguish), and put up with (tolerate).
Second example, from drama dialogue: a character's “I shall never agree to this, sir” becomes He told the gentleman that he would never agree to that. Note the vocative sir is converted, not retained, and this shifts to that.
Traps
- Confusing near-neighbours (put off / put out; bring up / bring about).
- Reading idioms literally.
- Correct word, wrong form - supplying success where the sentence needs the adjective successful.
- When the rubric says “from the lesson”, using vocabulary the text does not contain.