Grammar and Vocabulary: Transformation and Usage
What the section tests
Grammar and Vocabulary checks control of tenses, active and passive voice, direct and indirect narration, sentence structure and word usage. Items usually ask you to transform, combine, correct or choose the best fit, so the grammar must remain accurate after the change.
Rules to apply
- Tense: keep a consistent time frame; use past perfect for the earlier of two past actions.
- Voice: move the object to subject position, use the correct form of be + past participle, and keep tense. Only transitive verbs passivise.
- Narration: adjust pronouns, tense, time and place words. Questions become statements; commands use told/asked + object + to + verb.
- Sentence structure: check subject-verb agreement, parallel items, and that every clause has a finite verb.
- Word usage: test collocation, preposition and connotation, not just a dictionary meaning.
Worked example
Direct: She said, 'I will finish the assignment tomorrow.' Indirect: She said that she would finish the assignment the next day. Reasoning: will backshifts to would, I changes to she, and tomorrow becomes the next day. Passive conversion of The teacher checked the papers gives The papers were checked by the teacher: past simple checked becomes were checked.
Traps
Double past ('she said she had will'); forgetting modal shift; using said before an indirect object without to; leaving question word order in reported questions; and changing voice without preserving tense.