Grammar and Language Study
Grammar and Language Study is the "Do as directed" block: sentences you must rewrite according to an instruction, with no choice about the sentence itself. Marks come from mechanical exactness, so learn each transformation as a fixed route with a check at the end.
High-frequency items
- Voice: object becomes subject, verb becomes be + past participle, tense is preserved, and the agent appears only when it matters.
- Reported speech: change pronouns, backshift the tense, shift time and place words; use "that" for statements, "if/whether" for yes–no questions, and statement order for wh-questions.
- Degrees of comparison: move between positive, comparative and superlative without changing the meaning.
- Question tags: auxiliary plus pronoun, opposite polarity.
- Conditionals: type 1 (if + present, will), type 2 (if + past, would), type 3 (if + had + past participle, would have).
- Simple, compound and complex sentences; joining with and, but, so, although; punctuation.
Worked examples
- She said, "I will finish the work tomorrow." → She said that she would finish the work the next day. Reasoning: I becomes she, will becomes would, tomorrow becomes the next day, and a statement takes "that".
- The boy broke the window. → The window was broken by the boy. Reasoning: the object is fronted, break becomes was broken for past passive, and the old subject follows "by".
Traps
Keeping question word order in reported questions ("He asked where was I going" is wrong); using "by" with verbs that take no object; forgetting "not" in negative tags; backshifting when the reporting verb is present ("She says that she is ill" stays present).