Grammar and Vocabulary in Context
These items test whether you can choose the one word or form that fits a sentence's grammar and meaning. The sentence around the gap decides the answer, so read the whole line before choosing.
What appears
- Tense and agreement, including present tense in when / before / after clauses about the future.
- Participles as adjectives: the boy running, the window broken.
- Relative pronouns: who, which, that, where, whose; omission of the object relative.
- Infinitive or gerund: enjoy -ing, want to, too ... to, enough to.
- Comparatives: as ... as, less, the most.
- Embedded questions and word order inside them.
- Conjunctions, prepositions and phrasal verbs.
- Vocabulary: the word that fits both the meaning and the part of speech.
Worked example
"This is the park ___ we played soccer last Sunday." (a) which (b) where (c) when (d) who Reasoning: "the park" is a place, and the clause "we played soccer" already has its own object, "soccer", so no object pronoun is needed; a place adverb is needed. Answer: (b) where. If the clause were "we visited last Sunday", "visited" would need an object, and the answer would be which, that, or nothing.
Traps
- "look forward to" and "be used to" take -ing, not the base verb.
- a few (some) versus few (almost none); a little versus little.
- Subject-verb agreement after "one of the + plural noun".
- "so do I" versus "so am I" - match the auxiliary.
- Choosing a word that is grammatical but does not fit the sentence's meaning.