Unit Test 5 VOCABULARY
Complete the sentences with the verbs in the box. There are two extra verbs.
attend do (x2) drop fail learn leave skip
0 In England, you can do three or four subjects at A level.
1 I’m always very disappointed when I an exam.
2 Jim wants to a course in photography at college.
3 We often have to things by heart, such as poetry.
4 Some students lessons if they don’t like them.
5 When you’re older, it’s possible to a subject if you find it too demanding.
Complete the sentences with a word from each box.
carry chill get (x2) meet put
on (x2) out rid of up up with
0 What time do you get up in the morning?
1 You should all these old papers. Throw them out!
2 I study hard all week, so I like to at the weekend.
3 I’m going to my friends in town tomorrow.
4 I have to my uniform every morning for school.
5 Simon wants to studying after he leaves school.
Match 1–5 with a–h to make sentences with get. There are two extra options.
0 Don’t stay out too long; it’s beginning to get c
1 Ben emailed Joe yesterday, but he didn’t get any
2 I don’t like exams; I always get really
3 It’s nearly time to leave for school; I’d better get
4 Luke applied to go to university, but he didn’t get
5 My gran loves shopping, but nowadays she gets very
a nervous.
b a good job.
c dark.
d ready.
e tired.
f reply.
g home.
h a place.
Complete the sentences with the correct form of the words in capitals.
0 Sam needs to make a decision about where he’s going to study next year. DECIDE
1 Everyone likes our teacher. She’s such a person. FRIEND
2 The in the city is really beautiful. ARCHITECT
3 Being a doctor is a really job. DEMAND
4 I need to before our next exams. REVISION
5 Tom thinks he’d like to study at university. ENGINEER
GRAMMAR
Match 1–5 with a–f to make conditional sentences.
0 If we’re free on Saturday, e
1 If it’s warm and sunny,
2 If it rains,
3 We’ll go on the bus
4 We won’t go shopping
5 We’ll buy a snack
a if Dad can’t drive us there.
b we’ll go to the cinema.
c we’ll go to the beach.
d if we’re hungry.
e we’ll have a day out.
f if we’ve got no money.
Complete the first conditional sentences with the correct forms of the verbs in brackets.
0 If Ted passes (pass) his A-levels, he will feel (feel) really excited.
1 If you (not run), you (miss) the bus!
2 If you (not have) any money, I (lend) you some.
3 What (you/do) if the weather (be) bad tomorrow?
4 Mark (be) exhausted when he (get) home.
5 You (not do) well in the test if you (not study).
Complete the sentences with which, who, where or that. Leave out the relative pronoun if the sentence is correct without it.
0 That’s the man who lives next door to us.
1 I love beaches there aren’t many people.
2 Sarah wants to buy a dress isn’t too expensive.
3 My mum’s the one does all the driving in our family.
4 I went back to the place I was born last week.
5 Rob can’t afford the phone he really likes.
Choose the correct option. If the sentence is correct without a relative pronoun, choose –.
0 Maisie wanted some shoes where / who / – she could wear for the party.
1 Let’s find an assistant – / that / which can give us some advice.
2 There’s the shop that / – / where you can buy great chocolate ice cream!
3 Mum’s car is the one which / where / who is near the school gate.
4 Mrs Jones is the teacher which / – / where we all like best.
5 The waiter who / – / which served us was very helpful.
От
How should you write a sentence?
Well, most guides will start off with 10,000 ways NOT to write a sentence.
You know, the finger-wagging schoolmarm that lectures you about avoiding fragments and comma splices and run-ons.
Ugh. That’s so negative. I prefer to focus on all the beautiful ways that you CAN write a sentence (trust me, there’s a lot!)
What I’m going to show you in this post is a “Sentence Tree.” This is where you start with a single simple sentence, and spin it off into a few variations, and then a few more variations off of that, until you have a whole tree full of branching variations.
And every single one of these sentences is going to be about crocodiles, because it’s easier to see sentence variations when they’re all about the same topic. Plus, crocodiles are fun! Or at least dangerous, which is kind of fun.
And after you’re finished reading this, if you’d like to learn even more about sentences, check out my course, “How to Write a Splendid Sentence.”
And for our initial sentence, let’s start with something simple.
1. SVO Sentence
“That is not a crocodile.”
Now that one’s pretty easy. It’s a SVO sentence. Which means you’re writing “Subject, Verb, Object” in that order and that order alone.
Subject = That
Verb = Is
Object = Crocodile
If you’re just starting out writing sentences, that’s an excellent place to start. It’s clear! It’s direct! Now you know what a crocodile isn’t!
But most of the time, if you just write SVO sentences, they get very, very boring, and you will put all of your readers to sleep.
Once they’re asleep, you have two options: you can shout/wave your hands/blow an air-horn, or … you can write different sentences.
2. Preposition Opening
The next thing you should learn about how to write a sentence is to vary your sentence openings.
For instance, what about starting with a preposition? (Prepositions indicate direction, such as of, to, at, of, above, under…)
“In just a moment, he’d realize he should have obeyed the “no fishing” sign.”
Ah, what a lovely variation! If you slip a preposition sentence inside a paragraph full of SVO sentences, it will feel like a breath of fresh air.
Plus, it works like a mystery — the reader wants to know what’s going to happen in just a moment, and so they’re propelled to read to the end of the sentence, curious about what’s going to happen next.
In just a moment … What? Tell me already! I want to know!
3. Adverb Opening
Let’s look at another sentence variation opener. This time, we’ll use an adverb to launch this sentence.
“Carefully, he put the meat inside the crocodile’s mouth.”
That pause at the beginning of the sentence — a single word followed by a comma — is like the tension before a climax. We want to know exactly what he’s doing that requires such care, and so we keep reading.
Little tiny variations like this don’t seem to matter much, but they have a tremendous affect on the reader. It’s the difference between a reader getting bored and the reader thinking you’re a genius.
And in fact, there’s a whole bucketful of openings we can use on our sentences. If you carefully cycle through a bunch of them, it will go a long way toward not making your reader fall asleep.
And keeping your reader awake is a very good goal to shoot for.
So far, all three our sentences have been pretty short.
Many short sentences in a row get boring.
Your reader’s eyes will start to glaze.
You need to provide some variety.
You need to write a longer sentence. (See — you just got tired of all those short sentences!)
How about we tackle more of a medium-length sentence? And what’s more, we’ll continue to avoid that simplistic SVO order, and try out a different structure.
Before we get to that, watch a video of me talking about sentences. This is the first video in my course, “How to Write a Splendid Sentence,” and I’ll talk about WHY writing great sentences is so important, and how to improve.
4. Standalone/Leaning Sentence
Now we’re going to learn how to write a Standalone/Leaning sentence.
A leaning part of a sentence is one that can’t stand on its own (“While it’s not the best weather…”), while a standalone part of a sentence is one that can function all by itself (“We should still go skiing.”).
“When the zookeeper said she could have what she wanted, he didn’t expect she would bejewel herself.”
We start with the leaning part of the sentence — “When the zookeeper said she could have what she wanted…” (see how that’s not a finished thought?)
Then we end with the standalone part: “He didn’t expect she would bejewel herself.”
What’s great about a standalone/leaning sentence is that you can create a mystery. When you start with a leaning part of a sentence, grammatically the reader is eager to learn about the end of the sentence!
It’s like music when you’re playing an unresolved chord, and the listener is yearning for the resolving chord.
Still, I think we can do even better than that sentence.
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