English practice
Grammar, vocabulary and usage. Mostly rules, with a handful of habits to unlearn.
15 questions, 15 minutes, one mark each with nothing deducted for a wrong answer. Every explanation shows the working, so a question you get wrong is worth more than one you get right.
English practice
Questions written for this site to practise on. They are not from any real examination and no exam body is connected to them — every answer can be checked by hand from the explanation.
- Questions
- 15
- Minutes
- 15
- Max marks
- 15
- Sections
- 1
About english
English sections ask for agreement, tense, prepositions, voice, vocabulary and error spotting. The rules are finite and the same handful come up repeatedly, which makes this one of the most improvable sections on any paper.
A lot of what is tested is what ordinary speech gets wrong. “Between you and I” sounds careful and is incorrect; “each of the students have” sounds natural and is incorrect. Recognising your own habits is most of the work.
When a sentence feels wrong but you cannot name why, strip it down. Remove the phrase between the subject and the verb and read what is left — “each … has” survives that test, “each … have” does not.
Where marks get lost
- Letting a nearby noun govern the verb.
- In “each of the students”, the subject is “each”, which is singular. The plural sitting next to the verb is inside a prepositional phrase and does not control it.
- Choosing the article by the letter rather than the sound.
- “An honest man” and “a university” — h is silent in the first and u sounds like “yoo” in the second. Say it aloud and follow the sound.
- Using “I” after a preposition because it sounds more correct.
- Prepositions take the object form: between you and me, for him and me. Test it by dropping the other person — “between I” is obviously wrong.
- Losing the tense when changing to the passive.
- “Has approved” becomes “has been approved”, not “is approved”. The passive changes who is doing what, not when it happened.