FOUNDATIONS · TECHNIQUE GUIDE
Grammar Clues for PTE
Recognize nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs by the job they perform in the sentence—not just by their endings.
What to look for
- What the word is doing in this sentence
- The determiner, auxiliary or preposition around it
- Which word it describes or controls
Decision process
- Locate the main subject and verb
- Mark obvious function words such as articles and prepositions
- Use the surrounding structure to predict the missing word class
- Only then compare candidate meanings
Common traps
- Assuming every -ly word is an adverb
- Assuming “to + word” always means an infinitive
- Identifying word class from the word alone instead of its sentence role
Apply it
In “a significant improvement”, improvement is the noun and significant describes it, so significant is an adjective.
Now try it on your own sentence.
Analyze a sentence →Paste text into the Grammar Analyzer and map the structure before deciding what is wrong.