Grammar and Vocabulary
What this section tests
Grammar and vocabulary items test your control of tense, agreement, articles, prepositions, comparatives, infinitives, participles, relative clauses and common collocations. Nagasaki's paper tends to place these in short, everyday sentences rather than in isolated labels, so read the whole sentence before choosing.
Core rules
- Find the time expression first: 'since' and 'for' point to perfect forms; 'yesterday' points to the past simple; 'tomorrow' to future forms.
- Check subject–verb agreement after long subjects and after 'one of the ...'.
- Learn verb + preposition and adjective + preposition as whole phrases: 'listen to', 'good at', 'afraid of'.
- Distinguish participle adjectives: 'interesting' describes a thing; 'interested' describes a person.
- For vocabulary, use the surrounding words to decide meaning and word class.
Worked example
'My sister ( ) in Nagasaki since 2020.' Choices: lives / lived / has lived / is living. Reasoning: 'since 2020' marks a state that began in the past and continues now, so the present perfect 'has lived' is required. 'Lived' would need a finished past time such as 'from 2015 to 2020'.
Traps
Choosing by sound rather than grammar; forgetting the third-person -s; using 'borrow' for 'lend'; confusing 'few' and 'little'; and missing a negative or a question form.