Tips Part 4-Key Word Transformation- Reading and Use of English

The Rules / Common Mistakes

• • You MUST use the keyword, and you can’t CHANGE the keyword. If the keyword is ‘follow’ you cannot write ‘follows’ or ‘following’.
  • You must use between 2 and 5 words. It might be possible to create a grammatically correct sentence by writing 13 words, but you will get no points for that.
  • Contractions count as two words. Didn’t = did not; isn’t = is not; etc. However, can’t = cannot = one word.
  • Correct spelling is very important here
  • Write your answers in CAPITAL LETTERS

Don’t Waste Time Here

Because this part of the exam is so hard, do it quickly. Some questions will be too hard for you – write your best guess and move to the next one. If there is an answer you know, take a few seconds to double-check that what you have written makes sense.

General Tips

• Make sure the nouns and verbs in your sentence ‘agree’ with each other. I play/you play/he plays.
• Try to keep the meaning from the first sentence. Use the same words where possible.

Example:

John finds trains very interesting.

IN

John is very interested in trains.

Note that I didn’t write ‘John is interested in trains‘… the first sentence says ‘very interesting’.

Some Case Studies

Paula can’t wait to hear the band’s new album.

FORWARD

Paula is really ________________________________ the band’s new album.

One thing you could do is to match parts of the second sentence to the first sentence to see what’s missing. Let me try to show you what I mean.

Does that make sense?

Now we can see that the phrase starting with ‘is really…’ means ‘can’t wait to hear’.

So, do you know a phrase with ‘forward’ inside? Of course you do! You write some version of it at the end of every email:

I’m looking forward to meeting you.
I look forward to meeting you.

Grammar tip – in that construction ‘to’ is a preposition so the verb that follows must be a gerund (meeting/seeing/visiting etc).

So…

Paula can’t wait to hear the band’s new album.

FORWARD

Paula is really ___looking forward to hearing__ the band’s new album.

Why did I use the verb ‘hearing’? Because the original sentence used the verb ‘hear’. Easy!

Another example:

It’s a shame I’m not able to come to your party on Saturday.

COULD

I ………………………………………………….. to your party on Saturday.

This one is a little bit tricky because there are so many ways to use the word ‘could’ in English. Also, you have to be careful to get the right tense. When is the party? Past or future? Yep, future.

Here are some wrong answers:

• • I could not come to your party on Saturday.     (it has a past meaning)
  • I couldn’t have come to your party on Saturday.   (also past)
  • Anyway, we have to say ‘it’s a shame’. Here’s the right answer:
  • I wish I could come to your party on Saturday.

or

• • I wish that I could come to your party on Saturday.

That means exactly the same as the original sentence. You could also say ‘I wish I could GO to your party’ but I advise you to use the same verb that’s in the first sentence unless you have a good reason to change it.