Vocabulary and Grammar: Form, Collocation, and Sentence Logic
Vocabulary and Grammar tests control of form and meaning at sentence level. Fukushima Entrance English typically asks you to choose the word or structure that fits both the grammar and the surrounding context, so a phrase can be grammatically possible but still wrong.
Core rules
- For vocabulary, test collocation before translation: decide + to, depend + on, responsible + for, apply + for a job.
- For grammar, isolate the tested structure: tense, agreement, relative clause, conditional, preposition, or word order.
- With subject-verb agreement, find the true head noun and ignore prepositional phrases; with either/or and neither/nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject.
- In conditionals, check whether the sentence is real, unreal present, or unreal past: If I were, I would; If I had known, I would have.
- For word order, place adverbs of frequency before the main verb but after be.
Worked example
Sentence: Neither the students nor the teacher ___ aware of the schedule change. A. were B. was C. have been D. be
Reasoning: The structure is neither X nor Y. The verb agrees with the nearer subject, teacher, which is singular. 'Was' fits. A and C are plural; D is not a finite past or present form here. The prepositional phrase 'of the schedule change' does not change the subject.
Traps
- Matching a word's dictionary meaning while ignoring its grammatical pattern.
- Letting a plural noun inside a prepositional phrase control agreement.
- Confusing similar forms: affect/effect, lend/borrow, rise/raise.
- Choosing 'will' after if in a conditional when the sentence needs present or past.
- Missing a required preposition after a verb or adjective.