Vocabulary and Grammar in Context
What vocabulary and grammar items test
These are short cloze sentences or dialogues. Nara's paper checks junior high school grammar in context: tense, subject-verb agreement, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, comparatives, infinitives and gerunds, relative pronouns, and common collocations. The correct word must fit both meaning and form.
Core rules
- Read the whole sentence before choosing; a later word often signals the tense or number.
- Match time expressions to tense: 'yesterday' to past; 'since 2020' to present perfect; 'tomorrow' to future.
- Check countability: many/few with plural count nouns; much/little with uncountable nouns.
- Learn verb patterns: enjoy + -ing, want + to do, make + object + do, look forward to + -ing.
- For conjunctions, decide the logic: addition, contrast, cause, or condition.
Worked example
'I have lived in Nara ___ ten years.' Options: for / since / from / during. Reasoning: 'Ten years' is a length of time, not a starting point. Use 'for' with a duration; use 'since' with a point in time such as 2015. 'During' needs a noun event such as the holiday. The answer is 'for'.
Traps that cost marks
Translating a Japanese word directly and ignoring English grammar; choosing a synonym with the wrong pattern, such as 'I enjoyed to read'; missing a third-person -s; using 'very' before a comparative; and forgetting that 'news' is uncountable. When two options seem close, test the full sentence for agreement and logic.