LANTITE Literacy common mistakes
LANTITE Literacy · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Choosing an answer because it sounds formal or academic rather than because it is the most precise and economical phrasing of the idea.
Candidates assume the test rewards ornate vocabulary, so they pick the longest, most Latinate option. LANTITE-style items reward clarity, concision and standard written English, and wordy options often smuggle in redundancy or imprecision.
What to do instead
Before selecting, ask which option says the same thing with the fewest unnecessary words and no meaning change. Strike options containing redundant pairs (e.g. 'each and every', 'in order to' where 'to' suffices) or empty intensifiers. Practise rewriting sentences to remove wordiness, then compare your version to the options.
Treating punctuation as decoration and picking the option with the most commas, or avoiding semicolons and colons entirely.
Many candidates were taught punctuation by 'pause' rules rather than by grammar, so they insert commas at breath points and cannot distinguish a comma splice from a correctly joined clause.
What to do instead
Learn the finite set of structural rules: a comma cannot join two independent clauses without a conjunction; a semicolon can; a colon must follow a complete clause and introduce an explanation or list. Drill by labelling each clause as independent or dependent before checking punctuation, and check apostrophes separately for possession versus contraction.
Reading the passage once at normal speed and answering from general memory of its topic rather than from the specific lines the question targets.
Under time pressure, candidates rely on gist and prior knowledge, so they select options that are true about the subject but not supported by the text, or that overstate what the writer claimed.
What to do instead
Adopt a locate-and-verify routine: read the stem, identify the key term, scan back to the sentence containing it, and read one sentence either side. Reject any option you cannot point to a line for. For inference items, ask what the text logically entails, not what is plausible in the real world.
Confusing the writer's attitude or purpose with the topic, for example answering 'to inform' for a passage whose tone is sceptical or satirical.
Purpose and tone questions require reading evaluative language (modals, hedges, loaded adjectives), and candidates skip these cues because they read only for content.
What to do instead
Annotate evaluative words as you read: 'reportedly', 'arguably', 'merely', 'unfortunately'. Decide whether each is neutral, approving or critical. Then match the overall pattern to a purpose option, and eliminate options that describe the topic rather than the rhetorical aim.
Selecting a grammar answer by ear, choosing whichever option 'sounds right' in casual speech.
Everyday spoken English tolerates constructions that standard written English marks as errors, such as 'between you and I', 'less people', dangling modifiers and non-agreeing collective nouns. The ear is trained on speech, not on edited prose.
What to do instead
Test each option by isolating the disputed element: remove the compound subject to check pronoun case ('between you and I' becomes 'between I', so it fails); substitute a countable noun to check 'less/fewer'; and check that the introductory phrase's implied subject matches the main clause subject. Build a personal error list from practice and re-test it weekly.
Spending equal time on every item, then rushing the final multi-part or longer-response questions where marks are densest.
Candidates treat the paper as a flat sequence and get anchored on a hard early question, losing minutes that the later, higher-value items needed.
What to do instead
Do a first pass answering only items you can resolve within about a minute, flag the rest, and return. Practise with a timer to learn your personal per-item pace, and rehearse a hard-stop rule: if two minutes pass without progress, mark and move on.
Writing a response that answers the prompt's topic but ignores its stipulated audience, purpose or form.
Candidates focus on content generation and skim the task instructions, missing requirements such as writing to parents rather than colleagues, or producing a persuasive rather than informative text.
What to do instead
Before writing, spend thirty seconds extracting the audience, purpose and form into a one-line plan, and choose register and structure from it. In checking, verify that the salutation, level of technicality and closing match the stipulated reader, and that the text does the stipulated job.
Producing a response with a strong opening and closing but body paragraphs that list points without development or linking.
Candidates equate length with quality and pad with assertions, unaware that the marking rewards coherent development, paragraph unity and explicit connections between ideas.
What to do instead
Plan one claim per paragraph, each supported by evidence or example and linked to the thesis. Use a small set of connectives deliberately (however, consequently, in contrast) rather than mechanically, and check that each paragraph's first sentence signals its function.
Making surface-level edits only, such as fixing spelling, while leaving sentence fragments, run-ons and faulty parallelism untouched.
Candidates proofread for what they can see easily and lack a checklist for structural error, so the highest-weighted weaknesses survive into the final draft.
What to do instead
Proofread in passes: one pass for sentence boundaries (read each sentence aloud and check it has a subject and finite verb), one for agreement and tense consistency, one for punctuation, one for spelling. Reading backwards sentence by sentence helps isolate structure from meaning.
Misreading the question stem's qualifier, answering 'which is NOT supported' or 'the main purpose' as though it asked for the best-supported statement.
Stems contain small but decisive words (NOT, EXCEPT, main, primarily, according to the writer) that candidates skip when they recognise the topic and jump to the options.
What to do instead
Underline the operative word in every stem before reading options, and restate the task silently ('I am looking for the one the passage does not support'). When two options seem right, re-read the stem to confirm which constraint eliminates one.