Two Doors, One Sentence
Each pair drawn as two doors — one fits the slot, the other does not.
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The words look alike. The slots do not.
Separate the word pairs Band 6.5 candidates confuse under time pressure, closing the last common source of lexical inaccuracy.
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You know both words in every pair here. Under time pressure you will still reach for the wrong one.
Everything else in this course has been about choosing a word. This sprint is about not slipping — the ten pairs where you already know both words and pick the wrong one anyway, because they sound alike and you are writing fast.
These are not vocabulary gaps. They are precision failures under pressure, and each one is worth a two-second test you can actually run in the exam.
Each pair drawn as two doors — one fits the slot, the other does not.
The words look alike. The slots do not.
Five rapid items. Speed matters — the skill is applying the test under pressure.
Go fast. In the exam you will have about two seconds per decision, and the skill being trained is applying the test under pressure, not deliberating.
Rising fuel costs ___ the price of almost everything else.
Three decisions where naming the test matters more than knowing the answer.
One
Sentence: The policy had a significant ___ on rural employment.
Candidates: affect / effect
The answer:
The test:
Two
Sentence: Fewer people are travelling, so there is ___ congestion than before.
Candidates: less / fewer
The answer:
The test:
Three
Sentence: From these figures we can ___ that demand is falling.
Candidates: imply / infer
The answer:
The test:
A paragraph with eight gaps drawn from every pair in the sprint.
On the closure of rural bus services
The withdrawal of subsidised routes has had a severe on villages with no alternative transport.
Operators argue that running near-empty buses is not , and on their own figures that is difficult to dispute.
But the reason for low usage is the timetable rather than demand: services that run twice a day will always carry passengers than services that run hourly.
The network now eleven routes, down from thirty in 2010, and residents report disruption — not constant, but recurring every few months as another route is cut.
The operators' own report that further closures are likely, though it stops short of saying so outright.
From this we can that the remaining network is not secure.
Write a short paragraph using four pairs, and have every one checked.
Use four of the ten pairs from this sprint, correctly.
You choose which four. Pick the ones you are least sure about, not the ones you already have right — this is the last practice block in the course, and it is worth spending on your actual weaknesses.
About four sentences. Four pairs from this sprint.
The uncertain ones are the useful data.