Word Formation for Part 3 of the CAE Exam
This article will be a step by step demonstration of part 3 of the CAE Use of English paper. Part 3 tests a students knowledge of 'word formation'. This is where you convert a word from one form to another part of speech (noun,adjective,adverb etc). It is very important to know what part of speech the missing word needs to be.
Step 1
Read the whole quickly just to get an overall feel for what it is and what it's about. Then re-read the text and note down what each missing word should be (noun,verb,adjective or adverb). This can be deduced by the words before and after the gap. Decide if the word is positive or negative.
Step 2
Change the words into the correct part of speech
Step 3
Read and check the word makes sense.
Example
0 - 'sports person' is a compound noun therefore it is probable the missing word is an adjective
17 - this gap is preceded by 'can be' normally followed by either a verb or an adjective. In this case we need to look at the sentence and the context of the text. What do we do with opponents in sports competitions? We beat them! Therefore, we need to think of a synonym of beat which is with 'come'. The answer is 'overcome'.
18 - 'comprehensive' is an adjective is an adjective so it is probable that the following word will be a noun. 'Fit' in its noun form is 'fitness' which also collocates with'regime'.
19 - in this gap we can see the word is preceded by'the' which strongly indicates it is a noun. The noun of 'endure' is 'endurance'.
20 - if we look at this sentence we can see that it is a comparative structure. The thing that is missing is a the adjective. The adjective of 'benefit' is 'beneficial'.
21 - again the gap here is preceded by 'the' which means we are looking for an adjective. We can also tell from the context of the sentence that the word if a negative. The noun of 'able' is 'ability' and the negative prefix is 'in' = 'inability'.
22 - 'muscular' is an adjective which suggests the word in the gap will be a noun. The noun of 'strong' is 'strength'.
23 - if we look at the words that precede and follow this gap ('is' and 'done' respectively). These are both verbs suggesting the missing word is an adverb. The adverb of type is typically.
24 - again we see the gap is preceded by 'the' and this means the word is probably a noun. The noun of 'severe' is 'severity'.
Well hope this helps!
3 janvier 2019
