Lesson 10 of 15 · Grammar
Grammar course 1: Sentence structure and word forms
Most grammar questions in Parts 5 and 6 can be solved by asking one question: what job does the blank do in this sentence? This first grammar lecture gives you the tools to answer it — the five basic sentence patterns, the positions of each part of speech, and the rules for nouns, determiners, pronouns, agreement, adjectives, adverbs and comparisons that the TOEIC tests again and again.
Free extract from the Noto Tracks TOEIC course
In the full lesson you will learn to
- recognize the five basic sentence patterns and find the subject and main verb of any sentence quickly;
- predict the part of speech a blank needs from the words around it, and identify word forms from their suffixes;
- choose between countable and uncountable nouns, people nouns and thing nouns, and the right article, determiner or quantifier;
- select the correct pronoun form, including reflexives, those who, one/ones and each other;
- make subjects and verbs agree, even when long phrases separate them;
- choose correctly between adjectives and adverbs, and form comparatives and superlatives.
1. How the TOEIC tests grammar in Parts 5 and 6
Part 5 (Incomplete Sentences) gives you 30 sentences, each with one blank and four options. Part 6 (Text Completion) gives you four short texts — e-mails, notices, memos, articles — each with four blanks, one of which is a whole sentence. Together they make up 46 of the 100 Reading questions, and a large share of them are grammar questions rather than vocabulary questions.
You can usually tell which kind of question you are facing before you read the sentence. Look at the four options first:
- Same word family (decide, decision, decisive, decisively) → a word-form question. You need the right part of speech. This is the subject of most of this lecture.
- Same verb in different forms (sends, sent, has sent, is being sent) → a verb question: tense, voice or agreement (Lecture 11).
- Small grammar words (he, him, his, himself or because, because of, although, despite) → a pronoun or connector question (this lecture and Lecture 12).
- Different words of the same type (confirm, reserve, describe, attend) → a vocabulary question: read the whole sentence for meaning.
Free pages from this lesson
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Keep going with the full lesson
The rest of this lesson is in the Noto Tracks TOEIC course, with the practice questions and the answer key.
- 2. Sentence structure: the five basic patterns
- 4. Nouns
- 6. Pronouns
- 10. A five-step routine for word-form items
Also in the full lesson
- Practice questions
- Answer key with explanations
- One-page summary
50 questions, free, with an estimated score.
TOEIC is a registered trademark of ETS. This guide is not endorsed or approved by ETS. Noto Studio is not affiliated with ETS. All examples are original.