Language Use: Grammar, Vocabulary and Punctuation
Language Use: Grammar, Vocabulary and Punctuation
This domain tests accuracy at sentence level: tense and aspect, agreement, articles and prepositions, clause structure, connectors, word formation, collocation, and punctuation. Questions may be gap-fill, error correction, sentence transformation or punctuation insertion.
Core rules
- Find the grammatical subject before choosing a verb: 'The list of items is...' (list, not items).
- With 'neither...nor' and 'either...or', the verb agrees with the nearer subject: 'Neither the teacher nor the students were informed.'
- Use the apostrophe for possession and contraction, not for plurals: 'the students' essays' (plural owners), 'the student's essay' (one owner), 'it's' means 'it is'.
- A semicolon joins two independent clauses; a colon introduces an explanation, list or quotation.
- Learn word families and collocations together: 'make a decision', 'take responsibility', 'highly effective', not 'strongly effective'.
Worked example
Sentence: 'Neither the teacher nor the students (was/were) informed about the change.' Reasoning: the compound subject uses 'neither...nor'. Standard agreement follows the nearer subject, 'students', which is plural, so 'were' is correct. Choosing 'was' by looking at 'teacher' is the common trap. Punctuation example: 'The library closed early, therefore we studied at home.' This is a comma splice. Correct: 'The library closed early; therefore, we studied at home.' The semicolon separates the two independent clauses; 'therefore' is a conjunctive adverb, not a conjunction.
Traps
Plural apostrophes ('CD's' for CDs); subject-verb agreement across a long phrase; using 'however' as if it were 'but' without punctuation; confusing 'affect/effect' and 'practice/practise'; changing tense halfway through a sentence.