- A student writes: "She gave a speech that made a strong impression in the audience." The teacher underlines "made a strong impression in" and marks it as a collocation error. Which revision correctly fixes this error while preserving the original meaning?
Answer: "Made a strong impression on the audience" — because the correct preposition that collocates with "make an impression" is "on," not "in," when referring to the effect something has on people.
When learning English, it's not enough to know individual words — you also need to learn which words naturally go together. These word partnerships are called collocations, and using the wrong preposition with a fixed phrase is one of the most common collocation errors for intermediate learners.
The phrase "make an impression" is a fixed collocation in English, and it always pairs with the preposition "on" when describing the effect something has on a person or group. So choice A — "made a strong impression on the audience" — is the correct revision. Think of it this way: the impression "lands on" the people who experience it. The preposition "on" signals that the audience is the surface or target receiving that effect.
Choice B is wrong on two levels: "do an impression" means to imitate or impersonate someone (like a comedian doing an impression of a celebrity), which completely changes the meaning. It also uses "to," which doesn't collocate naturally with "impression" at all. Choice C uses "for," which implies the impression was created in service of the audience — as if the speaker was doing them a favor — rather than describing the emotional or mental effect on them. Choice D uses "with," which suggests a shared or mutual experience between equals, but a speech doesn't create a joint impression; it creates one in the minds of the listeners.
Study tip: When you learn a new expression like "make an impression," always write it with its full preposition: make an impression on someone. Memorizing the whole chunk — not just the verb and noun — will help you avoid preposition errors like this one.
- Which underlined phrase in the student's paragraph contains a collocation error that must be corrected?
Answer: "did a big mistake" — this should be replaced with "made a big mistake" because "make" is the correct verb that collocates with "mistake," not "do."
When learning English, one of the trickiest challenges is collocations — word partnerships that native speakers use automatically. Some verbs "go with" certain nouns by convention, not logic. The verb pairs make/do cause constant confusion because both can mean "to perform an action," yet English treats them very differently depending on the noun that follows.
In this passage, the error appears in the phrase "did a big mistake." In English, "mistake" always collocates with make, not do. You make a mistake — this is fixed and non-negotiable in standard English. Choice D correctly identifies this error and provides the right fix: "made a big mistake."
Now let's look at why the other choices are wrong. Choice A claims "make a decision" should be "do a decision" — this is backwards. "Decision" collocates with make ("make a decision"), and the original phrase is already correct. Choice B claims "do research" should be "make research" — again, the opposite is true. "Research" is one of the nouns that pairs with do ("do research," "do homework," "do work"), so the original is correct. Choice C claims "take advantage" should be "get advantage" — but "take advantage" is a fixed expression in English. You cannot substitute get here; the original phrase is perfectly standard.
A helpful pattern to remember: make typically pairs with things you produce or create (make a decision, make a mistake, make a plan), while do pairs with tasks or activities (do research, do homework, do work). Memorizing these common pairs will help you avoid collocation errors on this exam.
- A student wants to express that her friend did not succeed in passing the driving test. She writes: "My friend failed to pass the driving test, so she was very disappointed." Her classmate suggests four different revisions. Which revision introduces a word-choice or collocation error that the ORIGINAL sentence does NOT have?
Answer: "My friend was unsuccessful in passing the driving test, so she was heavily disappointed." — replacing "very" with "heavily" introduces a collocation error, since "heavily" does not collocate with "disappointed" in standard English.
When reviewing revised sentences, your job isn't just to check grammar — you need to ask whether the word choices sound natural together. This is called collocation: certain words pair naturally in English, while others sound awkward even if the grammar is technically correct.
The original sentence uses "very disappointed," which is a perfectly natural collocation. The question asks you to identify which revision introduces a collocation error that the original doesn't have.
Choice B does exactly this. It swaps "very" for "heavily," giving us "heavily disappointed." While "heavily" works with words like influenced, criticized, or relied on, it does not collocate naturally with disappointed in standard English. Native speakers simply don't say "heavily disappointed" — this is the introduced error, making B the correct answer.
Now let's look at why the other choices are wrong answers to this question (meaning they do not introduce errors). Choice A replaces "failed to" with "didn't manage to," which is a smooth, natural paraphrase — no error there. Choice C uses "deeply disappointed," which is actually a stronger and very natural collocation (think: "deeply moved," "deeply troubled"), and "couldn't pass" is a natural alternative phrasing — no error introduced. Choice D changes "was very disappointed" to "felt very disappointed" and "failed to pass" to "did not pass," both of which are grammatically sound and meaning-preserving — again, no error.
Study tip: When checking collocations, ask yourself: Would a native speaker say this? Keep a personal list of common collocations (e.g., deeply disappointed, heavily influenced, strongly disagree) — these come up frequently on intermediate ESL exams.
- A student writes: "After the meeting, the manager asked the employees to carry out a report about the new safety procedures." A language instructor says "carry out a report" is a collocation error. However, a classmate argues that "carry out" is correct because it is commonly used in professional contexts. Who is right, and why?
Answer: The instructor is right. While "carry out" collocates with tasks like "carry out a survey" or "carry out an investigation," it does not collocate with "report." The correct collocation is "write a report" or "prepare a report," not "carry out" a report.
When learning English vocabulary, it's not enough to know what a word means — you also need to know which words it naturally pairs with. These natural pairings are called collocations, and using the wrong verb with a noun is one of the most common errors even advanced learners make.
The verb "carry out" is used in English to describe executing or performing a process or procedure — think "carry out a survey," "carry out an investigation," or "carry out an experiment." Notice that these phrases all involve a process, not a product. A report, however, is a document — something you create. That's why English speakers say "write a report," "prepare a report," or "draft a report." The verb must match the nature of the object. Answer C captures this distinction perfectly and is correct.
Answer A fails because it assumes that any professional task can pair with "carry out." This logic sounds reasonable, but collocations don't follow pure logic — they follow usage patterns that must be learned. Answer B is wrong in a different way: it overcorrects by claiming "carry out" only belongs in scientific or laboratory settings, which is false. "Carry out" appears in business, legal, and academic contexts all the time — just not with "report." Answer D is incorrect because "carry out" and "write" are not interchangeable. Native speakers do not naturally say "carry out a report," and claiming they do creates a false rule.
Your study tip: when you learn a new noun like "report," "survey," or "meeting," always learn the verbs that go with it as a chunk — write/prepare/submit a report, not just the noun alone. Collocations are best memorized together.
- Two of the four sentences contain adjective-preposition collocation errors. Which answer correctly identifies BOTH sentences with errors?
Answer: Sentences 1 and 4 — "interested about" should be "interested in," and "satisfied from" should be "satisfied with," because these are the fixed adjective-preposition collocations in standard English.
When you see a question about adjective-preposition collocations, you're being tested on fixed pairings — combinations where only one specific preposition is considered standard in English. These pairings must simply be memorized, because the grammar rules alone won't tell you which preposition is correct.
In this passage, Sentences 1 and 4 contain the errors, making A the correct answer. "Interested" always collocates with "in" — you say interested in something, never "interested about." Sentence 4's "satisfied from" is equally wrong; the fixed collocation is satisfied with, as in "satisfied with the results." Both errors involve prepositions that feel logical but violate established English conventions.
Choice B is a trap because it misidentifies the wrong sentences. "Bored of" is actually widely accepted in standard English alongside "bored with," so Sentence 2 is not clearly wrong. More importantly, B then claims "excited about" should be "excited for" — but "excited about" is completely correct and natural in both everyday and academic English.
Choice C correctly flags "interested about" in Sentence 1, but then falsely claims Sentence 3 is wrong. "Excited about" is a perfectly standard collocation, so Sentence 3 contains no error.
Choice D makes two mistakes: it wrongly targets "excited about" in Sentence 3, and it suggests "satisfied from" should be "satisfied by" — when the actual correct form is "satisfied with."
As a study tip, build a short list of common adjective-preposition pairs to memorize: interested in, satisfied with, bored with, excited about, worried about, tired of. These fixed collocations appear frequently on ESL exams and cannot be guessed from logic alone.
- Ben's lines contain two errors. One is a word-form error and one is a grammar-collocation error. Which answer correctly identifies BOTH errors?
Answer: "Reliefed" is an incorrect word form — the correct adjective is "relieved" — and "a very useful advice" is incorrect because "advice" is an uncountable noun that cannot take the article "a"; the correct form is "very useful advice."
When you see a question asking you to identify two specific types of errors — a word-form error and a grammar-collocation error — slow down and examine each word carefully rather than reading for general meaning.
Ben's first error is a word-form problem. The noun "relief" cannot simply have "-ed" added to become an adjective. English requires the correct base form: the adjective is "relieved," derived from the verb "to relieve." Saying "I am so reliefed" is like saying "I am so hopeed" — the form simply doesn't exist in English. The correct sentence is "I am so relieved."
Ben's second error involves countable versus uncountable nouns. "Advice" is an uncountable noun in English, meaning it has no plural form and cannot be preceded by "a" or "an." You cannot say "an advice" or "two advices," just as you cannot say "a water" or "two informations." The correct form is simply "very useful advice" — no article needed.
Answer D correctly identifies both issues, making it right. Answer A is wrong because it falsely claims "advice" and "tip" are interchangeable count nouns — they aren't grammatically equivalent. Answer B incorrectly diagnoses Ben's first error as a preposition problem ("in relief") and misidentifies the second error entirely, targeting Ana's line rather than Ben's. Answer C makes two false claims: "so" can absolutely precede regular adjectives like "relieved," and "advices" is never a correct English form.
Your study tip: memorize common uncountable nouns that English learners frequently over-count — advice, information, furniture, equipment, and news are tested often and never take "a/an" or a plural "-s."
- The student's email contains two collocation errors. Which answer correctly identifies BOTH errors and their corrections?
Answer: "Strong cold" should be "heavy cold" or "bad cold," and "catch up the missed work" should be "catch up on the missed work," because "strong" does not collocate with "cold" as an illness and "catch up" requires the preposition "on."
When you see a question about collocation errors, your job is to identify which word combinations break natural English patterns — even if every individual word seems fine on its own. This is different from grammar errors; collocation is about which words "go together" by convention.
The two errors in the student's email are "strong cold" and "catch up the missed work." In English, we don't say someone has a strong cold — the conventional collocations are "bad cold" or "heavy cold." The adjective "strong" pairs with things like opinions or coffee, not illnesses. The second error involves the phrasal verb "catch up," which requires the preposition "on" before a noun phrase: "catch up on the missed work." Without "on," the sentence is grammatically incomplete and unnatural. Answer B correctly identifies both errors and provides accurate corrections, making it the right choice.
Answer A identifies "tell that" as an error, but "tell that" is actually a grammatical error (tell requires a person object: "I am writing to tell you that..."), not strictly a collocation error. More importantly, A misses the "catch up" mistake entirely, so it only addresses one of the two collocation problems the question asks about.
Answer C correctly notes the "tell/say" distinction and "strong cold," but again focuses on only one collocation error and mixes in a grammar issue rather than staying focused on collocations as a pair.
Answer D invents "deep cold" as a correction — this is not a natural English collocation at all. While "make up the missed work" is a valid phrase, replacing "catch up" entirely isn't necessary; adding "on" fixes it.
Your study tip: build a personal list of common collocation pairs — especially adjective + noun (bad cold, heavy rain, strong opinion) and phrasal verb + preposition (catch up on, look forward to). These patterns must simply be memorized.
- A student writes the following sentence: "The company did a lot of progress last year and opened three new offices." A teacher marks "did a lot of progress" as incorrect. Which of the following best explains why this is a collocation error AND provides the correct form?
Answer: "Did a lot of progress" is incorrect because "do" does not collocate with "progress"; the correct collocation is "made a lot of progress," since "make" is the standard verb paired with "progress" in English.
When learning English vocabulary, it's not enough to know what a word means — you also need to know which verbs, adjectives, and nouns naturally go with it. This is called collocation, and it's one of the trickiest parts of sounding natural in English. When you see a question like this, ask yourself: "Is this the verb that English speakers actually pair with this noun?"
The noun "progress" has a fixed partner verb in English: make. Native speakers say "make progress," "make a mistake," "make an effort" — these are set collocations you simply have to learn. The verb "do" pairs with different nouns, like "do homework" or "do research." Swapping "make" for "do" with "progress" sounds unnatural and is marked as a collocation error, not a grammar error. That's exactly what answer C identifies — "did a lot of progress" fails because "do" doesn't collocate with "progress," and the correction "made a lot of progress" restores the standard pairing.
Answer A is wrong because the problem isn't about the quantifier "a lot of" — "a lot of progress" is perfectly grammatical. The error is the verb "do," not the modifier. Answer B misidentifies the issue entirely: "progress" can function as a noun, and turning it into a verb changes the sentence structure unnecessarily without fixing a real collocation problem. Answer D is wrong because "a lot of" is not the issue — formality level isn't the error being tested — and "did considerable progress" still contains the same collocation mistake with "do."
A useful study tip: memorize common verb + noun collocations in chunks — make progress/plans/decisions, do research/homework/damage. Learning words in pairs, not isolation, will help you avoid this trap on the exam.
- A student wants to say that she is very tired after working all day. She writes: "I am very exhausted after my shift." Her teacher marks this as a word-choice problem. Which explanation BEST describes the error and provides the correct revision?
Answer: "Very exhausted" is a word-choice problem because "exhausted" is an extreme adjective already meaning completely tired; it should be modified by amplifiers like "absolutely" or "utterly," or used alone without an intensifier.
When choosing words to express strong feelings or states, you need to understand the difference between gradable and non-gradable (extreme) adjectives. Gradable adjectives like "tired" or "cold" exist on a scale, so "very" works naturally with them. Extreme adjectives, however, already contain the idea of maximum degree built into their meaning — and "exhausted" is one of these.
"Exhausted" doesn't just mean tired; it means completely drained of energy. Because the extreme meaning is already packed inside the word, adding "very" creates an awkward redundancy — like saying "very freezing" or "very enormous." Instead, extreme adjectives pair naturally with amplifiers such as "absolutely," "utterly," or "completely," or they stand alone without any intensifier. So the correct revisions would be: "I am absolutely exhausted after my shift" or simply "I am exhausted after my shift." This is why A is correct.
B is wrong because "exhausted" is not limited to academic writing — it's perfectly natural in everyday speech. Register has nothing to do with this error. C is wrong because "exhausted" can correctly follow the verb "be" as a predicate adjective; the choice between "be" and "feel" is a stylistic preference, not a grammar rule, and changing the verb doesn't fix the real problem with "very." D is dangerously backwards — "exhausted" functions here as an adjective, not a past-tense verb. "Exhausting" describes something that causes tiredness (a tiring shift), not someone who feels tired.
As a study tip, memorize a short list of common extreme adjectives — exhausted, starving, freezing, furious, terrified — and remember: swap "very" for "absolutely" or drop the intensifier entirely.
- The paragraph contains a grammatical collocation error involving a fixed verb pattern. Which sentence in the paragraph contains the error, and what is the correct revision?
Answer: "I am used to resolve problems" is the error; the correct form is "I am used to resolving problems" because the fixed pattern "be used to" must be followed by a gerund (-ing form), not a base-form infinitive.
When writing professionally in English, certain verb phrases follow fixed grammatical patterns that cannot be changed — even if another form might seem logical. One of the most commonly misused patterns is "be used to," which always requires a gerund (the -ing form of a verb), never a base-form infinitive.
The phrase "I am used to resolve problems" breaks this rule. "Be used to" means to be accustomed to something, and it treats whatever follows it as a noun-like concept — which is exactly what a gerund does. The correct revision is "I am used to resolving problems," making B the right answer. Compare: I am used to working late. She is used to handling difficult clients. The -ing form is non-negotiable here.
Answer A is incorrect because "arrive on time at work" is perfectly natural English. While "arrive at work on time" is also acceptable, neither version contains a grammatical error — this answer invents a rule about motion verbs that does not exist.
Answer C is a trap based on flawed logic. "Work under pressure" is a standard, widely accepted idiom in English. "Under pressure" correctly describes the feeling of being burdened by demands; saying "work with pressure" would sound unnatural and is not standard usage.
Answer D is similarly invented. "A strong addition to your team" uses the correct preposition. "Addition to" is the proper collocation — you add something to a group, not for it.
Study tip: Memorize "be used to" alongside other fixed patterns like "look forward to" and "be accustomed to" — all three require a gerund after "to," not an infinitive.
