JAMB Use of English common mistakes
JAMB Use of English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Choosing a synonym by matching the general meaning of the word in isolation rather than the meaning the word carries in the sentence, e.g. picking 'famous' for 'notorious' because both describe a well-known person.
Candidates memorise single-word glossaries and ignore connotation and context; JAMB items often hinge on a word that is correct in one sense but wrong in the sentence's register or tone.
What to do instead
For every synonym/antonym item, write the sentence's core meaning in your own words first, then test each option by substituting it into the sentence and asking whether the tone (positive/negative/neutral) and collocation still work. Drill with word pairs that share denotation but differ in connotation: notorious/famous, thrifty/stingy, childlike/childish, cheap/inexpensive.
Applying subject-verb agreement by proximity - letting the noun nearest the verb control it - so 'The list of items were long' or 'One of the boys are here' is chosen as correct.
The ear is drawn to the closest noun, and candidates have not internalised that the head noun governs the verb; long noun phrases with prepositional modifiers hide the true subject.
What to do instead
Before judging agreement, bracket and delete every prepositional phrase between subject and verb, then read subject plus verb alone. Memorise the fixed patterns: 'one of + plural noun + singular verb', 'each/every/either/neither + singular verb', 'a number of + plural verb' versus 'the number of + singular verb', and collective nouns treated as singular unless members act individually.
Treating 'concord' as only subject-verb agreement and missing pronoun-antecedent, determiner-noun, and tense-sequence concord, so a sentence with correct verb agreement but a mismatched pronoun is accepted as error-free.
Textbooks and revision notes foreground subject-verb rules, so candidates stop checking after the verb agrees; pronoun and tense errors slip past.
What to do instead
Run a four-point checklist on every concord item: (1) subject-verb, (2) pronoun-antecedent in number and person, (3) determiner-noun (much/many, less/fewer, this/these), (4) tense consistency across clauses. Practise by marking each of the four on a passage and finding which one is violated.
Reading a comprehension passage once, then answering from memory or from general knowledge instead of returning to the text, and choosing an option that is true in the world but not stated in the passage.
Time pressure and the habit of reading for gist only; distractors are deliberately written to be plausible real-world statements.
What to do instead
Adopt a locate-and-verify routine: read the question stem, identify the key word, scan for the sentence containing it, and underline the exact phrase that supports the answer. Reject any option you cannot point to a line for. For inference items, ask 'what must be true given this sentence?' rather than 'what is generally true?'.
Confusing the writer's tone, attitude, or purpose with the passage's topic - answering 'the passage is about corruption' when the question asks for the writer's attitude (e.g. 'condemnatory').
Topic and tone are conflated; candidates do not separate what is discussed from how it is presented, and miss evaluative adjectives and rhetorical signals.
What to do instead
Annotate tone words as you read (adjectives, adverbs, verbs of judgement such as 'lamentably', 'shamelessly', 'commendably') and classify the passage on a small scale: approving/neutral/critical, optimistic/pessimistic, formal/informal. Practise writing a one-line tone label for each paragraph before looking at the options.
Placing stress on the wrong syllable in words whose noun/verb or adjective/verb forms shift stress, e.g. saying RE-cord for the verb, or stressing the second syllable of 'comfortable', 'development', or 'photograph' incorrectly.
Nigerian English classroom pronunciation often differs from the Received Pronunciation patterns JAMB tests, and stress is taught by imitation rather than by rule.
What to do instead
Learn the productive rules: two-syllable nouns/adjectives usually stress the first syllable (REcord, PREsent, OBject) while the matching verbs stress the second (reCORD, preSENT, obJECT); words ending in -tion, -sion, -ic, -ical, -ity stress the syllable immediately before the suffix (develOPment is an exception to memorise, phoTOgraphy, eCONomic). Say each word aloud with a hand-clap on the stressed syllable and record yourself against a dictionary audio entry.
Judging rhyme by spelling rather than sound, so 'cough' is paired with 'though', or 'great' with 'treat', because the letters match.
English spelling is not phonetic, and candidates read with their eyes instead of sounding the words; silent letters and irregular vowel digraphs are underestimated.
What to do instead
Always pronounce both words aloud before deciding. Build a personal list of deceptive families: -ough (cough/off, though/owe, bough/cow, rough/stuff), and homograph pairs (wind/wind, live/live, read/read). Test rhyme by the final stressed vowel plus everything after it, not by the final letters.
Choosing the literal meaning of an idiom or phrasal verb instead of its idiomatic sense - reading 'he let the cat out of the bag' as being about an animal, or 'put off' as 'place outside'.
Idioms are non-compositional; candidates who have not met the expression before try to decode it word by word, and particle verbs (put off/put up with/take after) are especially misleading.
What to do instead
Learn idioms in full sentences with a context clue, and group phrasal verbs by particle to see the patterns (up = completion/increase: eat up, turn up; off = cancellation/departure: call off, set off; after = resemblance/pursuit: take after, run after). For any unfamiliar idiom in an exam, use the surrounding sentence's tone and result to infer meaning rather than the individual words.
Mixing up figures of speech that look similar - calling personification a metaphor, metonymy a simile, or labelling any exaggeration as hyperbole when it is a litotes or understatement - and missing oxymoron and paradox.
Definitions are memorised as slogans without contrastive examples, so the boundaries between related tropes blur under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Build a contrast table with one example per pair: simile (like/as) vs metaphor (direct identification); personification (human attribute to non-human) vs apostrophe (addressing an absent entity); metonymy (attribute for the thing: 'the crown' for monarchy) vs synecdoche (part for whole: 'all hands on deck'); hyperbole (deliberate overstatement) vs litotes (understatement by negation: 'not bad'). Classify ten unseen sentences daily against the table.
Filling cloze gaps one at a time in isolation, choosing an option that fits the blank locally but breaks the grammar or logic of the surrounding sentence and passage.
Candidates treat cloze as a series of independent vocabulary items and do not read ahead or back; cohesive devices (however, therefore, although) and parallel structures are missed.
What to do instead
Read the whole cloze passage once without filling anything to get its argument, then fill gaps using both the immediate collocation and the sentence's grammar (e.g. after 'although' expect a contrast; after a preposition expect a noun or gerund). Re-read the completed passage aloud to check flow, and eliminate options that are grammatically impossible before comparing meaning.
Writing a summary that copies whole sentences from the passage or adds personal opinion and examples, rather than stating the required points in the candidate's own concise words.
Fear of missing marks leads to lifting text; candidates also mistake summary for commentary and pad with material not in the passage.
What to do instead
Underline the required number of points in the passage, then rewrite each in one short sentence using your own vocabulary and no examples or figures unless they are the point. Keep to the stated word limit, use linking words to combine related points, and check each sentence against the question: 'Is this in the passage, and is it one of the asked-for points?'