Paper 3
Paper 3
TheEnglish in Use paper tests your ability'toapply knowled ge of the language
system, i nc luding control of the grammar, register,spelling, punctuation,
cohesion, coherenceandformulaic language.'
In otherwords,it is apractical grammar test: it tests not so much what you
knowaboutgrammaras how well you canuseit. Thepapercomprises six
questions,andyou have onehour and 30 minutes.
Part 1
Vocabularycloze (e.g. page 98)
Part1 consists of an authentic textof about 250 words. There are15 gapsin the
text.For each gapyou havea choiceof fourwords. Typically,thefourwordsw ill
fit the gapgrammatically,butone of t hewordswill be much more appropriatein
the context.
AdviceOilansweringP a rt I
1 Cover up all the sugges ted answers.
2 Head through thewholetext.
3 Read throughthe textagain, stoppi ngat eachgap. Tryto thinkofasuitablewo rd
before loo ki ng at thefourwo rdssugges ted.If the word~·ouhavethoughtofis
oneofthe[oury 0 1lareoffered, thenchooseit .D oHotallowyourselfto he
distractedbvthe others.
..J- If the word you thoughtofis not there,itmay helpifyo ustart hy eliminating
thosethatarede finitely wrong.
5 Makesurethe wo rdyo uchooseis possible grammatically:
- does itfitwith the prepositio ns in thetext?
- ifitis aHOWl,isitsillg 11 1ar/pluralto matchtheverband the article?
6 If you don't knowtheanswe r,g uess !Neve rleavea hlank on youranswersheet.
7 Whenyo u'redoingpract iceexe rcise s,don't usethe key to correct youra nswe rs.
You won't learn much that way. Use a goo d English-Englishdict ion ary and look
atthe ways eachofthefour sugges te d words are used. The examplesgiven in the
dictional)' willexplain all themost commo ncollocations.O nly whe nyou've
wo rked o ut answe rs should)' 0 11checkinthe key.Amore enjovah l ewayof
studying collocatio nsis toreada lotofEnglish for ple asure:magazines, fict ion, or
whateve rintere stsvoumost.
Part 2
Grammarcloze(e.g.page57)
This focuses ongrammar(e.g. prepositions) andcohesion(linking words, articles
andpronouns).Like Part 1, it takes the formof an authentictext of about 250
words. Again there are 15 gaps,butthistime the choiceis open.
Ad v iceonansweringPart 2
I Readthroughth e whole textfirst.
2 Mak e surethatthewordYO llchoose fits
- grammatically withthe words before it.
- grammaticallywith the wo rds afte rit.
- the punctua tion.
- themeaningofthe text.
3 Hemember,mostofthe answe rs in this ques tion are 'little' words -prono uns ,
articles, preposition s, conjunction s, etc. Don't imagine thatthe answeris goingto
be difficult: oftcnit'sa Simple wo rdsuchastheo ra.
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