Reading Fill in the Blanks: collocations and word forms

A lot of marks in the drag-and-drop Fill in the Blanks are lost on words the learner already knows. "Decision" gets dragged into a gap that needs a verb, and "make research" feels close enough to "conduct research". Knowing a word and knowing how it behaves are different skills, and this task tests the second one.

Let the gap tell you which form to look for

Decide what kind of word the gap needs before you look at the word box, because the words around it have already decided. After "the" or "a" you need a noun, or an adjective followed by a noun. After "to" you need a base verb. Next to a verb or an adjective, you often need an adverb.

Word endings give quick help, provided you treat them as a guide and not a law:

• Nouns often end in -tion, -sion, -ment, -ness, -ity or -ance: information, decision, development, awareness, ability, importance.
• Verbs often end in -ise, -ify or -en: organise, simplify, strengthen.
• Adjectives often end in -ous, -ive, -al, -ful or -able: dangerous, effective, national, useful, reliable.
• Adverbs very often end in -ly: quickly, significantly.

The exceptions are worth knowing. "Friendly", "likely" and "costly" end in -ly but are adjectives, and plenty of words, such as "research" and "increase", work as both noun and verb. So the sentence around the gap decides, not the ending alone.

Words that keep company

A collocation is a combination that native speakers habitually use together. There is usually no rule behind it, and no point arguing with it, so you learn it as a unit. A few that turn up often in academic writing:

• verb and noun: make a decision, conduct research, take place, pay attention, reach a conclusion
• adjective and noun: heavy rain, strong evidence, rapid growth, widespread use, severe shortage
• noun and preposition: an increase in, a solution to, an effect on, a reason for

If the box offers "make" and "conduct" and the noun is "research", both are base-form verbs, so grammar cannot choose between them. Only the partner can.

Prepositions are collocations too, and they are some of the cheapest marks in the task. Learn each verb or adjective together with its preposition: depend on, consist of, contribute to, responsible for, interested in, benefit from. Notice that "result in" and "result from" point in opposite directions: heavy rain resulted in flooding, and the flooding resulted from heavy rain.

A worked example

This passage is my own, made up for the purpose. The box is tidier than a real one, because it is full of near-twins on purpose. In the real task, expect some words to be left over.

1. changed. After "have" you need a past participle, and "change" is the base form.
2. conduct. Both "conduct" and "make" are base verbs, so the partner decides: conduct research.
3. availability. After "The" and before "of" you need a noun. "Available" is an adjective.
4. on. Depends on. "Of" is the tempting wrong preposition, which is exactly why you learn the pair and not the single word.

Fill the gaps you are sure about first. Every word you place leaves the box, so the unsure gaps face fewer candidates.

When you do not know the word

Unknown words turn up, and you can often take them apart:

• Prefixes change the meaning: un-, in-, im-, ir- and il- usually mean "not" (unlikely, inconsistent, impossible); re- means "again"; mis- means "wrongly"; over- and under- mean "too much" and "too little".
• Suffixes tell you the part of speech: -able makes an adjective meaning "can be done", -ment makes a noun, -ise makes a verb.

So "unsustainable" is un- (not) plus sustain (keep going) plus -able (can be): "cannot be kept going". Then check the sentence. If the gap follows "an" and comes before "approach", you need an adjective that starts with a vowel sound, and "unsustainable" fits both.

A collocation notebook, ten minutes a day

Keep one line per item, not one page:

1. Write the word inside a phrase: "conduct research", not "conduct".
2. Add the family in one line: decide, decision, decisive, decisively.
3. Add a partner and a preposition: "reach a decision", "a decision on".
4. Write one sentence of your own, about your own life or work. Sentences you invent are easier to remember than ones you copy.

Add three lines a day from whatever you read, and spend five minutes reviewing the last five days with the right-hand side covered. For a wider routine, see a vocabulary routine that fits into twenty minutes.

Then put it to work: try a drag-and-drop passage in the practice tests on this site and, for every gap you miss, note whether the problem was form, partner or preposition. The drop-down version of the task is covered in the Reading and Writing blanks method.