Vocabulary and Phraseology in Context
Vocabulary items in the paper are rarely isolated words; they are collocations, phraseological units and word-family choices tested inside a sentence. The examiner wants the word that Russian actually pairs with the other word, not the word your dictionary gives for the English.
Learn nouns with their verbs
Russian collocates predictably: сдать экзамен (pass an exam), принимать лекарство (take medicine), сделать ошибку (make a mistake), принять решение (take a decision), играть роль (play a role), обращать внимание (pay attention), оказать помощь (give help). Store the whole phrase.
Phraseological units
Idioms cannot be translated piece by piece: бить баклуши - to idle; ни свет ни заря - at dawn; как рыба в воде - in one's element; водить за нос - to deceive; спустя рукава - carelessly; медвежья услуга - a disservice. Recognise them as blocks.
Word formation as a guessing tool
Prefixes shift direction: при- arrival, у- departure, пере- across or repeat, вы- out, под- up to. Suffixes signal meaning: -ость abstracts (радость), -тель agent (учитель), -ник (помощник), -ск- adjectives (русский). A known root plus a known prefix often unlocks an unseen word.
Look-alikes and false friends
магазин is a shop, not a magazine (журнал); аккуратный is tidy, not accurate (точный); неделя is a week; фамилия is a surname; стул is a chair.
Worked example
«Он хорошо ___ экзамен по литературе.» Options: сдал / дал / взял. Reasoning: the fixed collocation for passing an exam is сдать экзамен, so сдал. дать (to give) and взять (to take) are grammatically possible but collocationally wrong. Note the aspect pair сдавать/сдать - the imperfective would describe the sitting, not the result.
Traps
Translating idioms literally; choosing a synonym that does not collocate; learning a verb without its aspect partner; assuming a Russian word means what the similar English word means.