Keyword Transformation Tips

Essential strategies and common pitfalls to help you ace your Cambridge English exam.

What to do

In this part, there are six unconnected sentences. For each one, you complete a new sentence that has a similar meaning.

Utilize the WORD given in capital letters for each sentence, which you must not change.

Don't worry if your alternative answer is correct. In the actual exam, examiners review each solution individually and award extra points if necessary. For convenience, in this app contractions are not allowed, although they are in the real exam.

Find chunks of text that are the same in both sentences and delete them. That helps you to focus on what you actually need to be transforming.

Make sure that the two sentences mean the same thing. For example, if the sentence to transform has names in it, the answer will have to have them too.

Because of the scoring system, it’s possible to get 50% in this section without getting any of the questions 100% correct.

So it’s worth answering every question! Even incomplete answers can get points.

For convenience, in this app, the whole answer must be correct.

Strategy

1. Read the sentence carefully and think about its exact meaning.
2. Check your tenses – if the first sentence is in the past tense, the second should be, too!
3. Contractions (e.g. haven’t) count as two words.
4. Try to keep the same meaning – If the first sentence says ‘Tom said…’ then don’t write ‘He said...’ in the second sentence. (Write ‘Tom said’.)

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