Use of English - Post-UTME Study Guide
Use of English in the Post-UTME tests comprehension, lexical choice, grammar and oral English. Questions are passage-based or single-sentence items, so the right answer must fit both meaning and structure.
Core rules
- Comprehension: locate the main idea, tone and inference; choose only what the passage states or implies.
- Lexis: watch synonyms, antonyms, collocations and register; a word may be correct in meaning but wrong in usage.
- Grammar: concord, tense sequence, pronoun reference, modifiers and prepositions carry most marks.
- Oral English: distinguish minimal pairs such as /ɪ/ in sit and /iː/ in seat; note stress shifts between noun and verb, e.g. REcord (noun) and reCORD (verb).
Worked example
Neither the teacher nor the students ___ ready. The subject nearest the verb is students, plural, so the answer is are. With either...or and neither...nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject, not with the first noun.
Traps
Do not answer comprehension questions from outside knowledge. Do not assume the first noun controls concord in correlative constructions. Watch words that look alike but differ: affect/effect, complement/compliment, stationary/stationery. In oral items, do not confuse spelling with sound; English spelling is not a reliable guide to vowel quality. For lexis items, test the chosen word in the original sentence before accepting it.