Vocabulary and Grammar
What is tested
Vocabulary and grammar appear as fill-in-the-blank, word ordering, tense choice, and sentence transformation. The paper checks control of basic sentence patterns: be/have/do, tense and aspect, modals, comparatives, infinitives, gerunds, participles, relative pronouns, conjunctions, and indirect questions.
Core rules
- Find the skeleton first: subject, verb, object/complement. Then fit the blank to the skeleton.
- Match tense to time expressions and to the other verbs in the sentence.
- In word-order items, build from the verb outward: who did what, where, when, why.
- After a preposition, use a noun or gerund, not a base verb.
- In indirect questions, use statement order: "where he lives," not "where does he live."
- Check countability and articles: advice, information, and furniture are uncountable.
Worked example
Order the words: 彼は私にどこで切符を買えばよいか教えてくれた。 Available: me / told / he / where / to / buy / a / ticket Answer: He told me where to buy a ticket. Reasoning: "tell + person + question word + to + verb" expresses indirect instruction. "Where to buy" keeps statement order; "where did I buy" would be a direct question and is wrong after "told me."
Traps
- "Borrow" vs "lend": you borrow from someone; you lend to someone.
- Forgetting third-person -s or plural -s under time pressure.
- Using "because" and "so" in the same clause.
- Translating Japanese word order directly into English.
- Choosing a word that fits the meaning but not the grammar slot.