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4 real mistakes, pulled from real questions across this series
The same handful of mistakes shows up again and again, across different question types. Four of them, each grounded in a real question from earlier in this series, plus the one habit that fixes most of them at once.
True/False/NG & Yes/No/NG mistake: missing the absolute-word trap
A statement using words like “entirely,” “all,” or “only” is often built specifically to be contradicted. Test 11 asked whether “Uzbekistan has abandoned cotton cultivation entirely” — the passage said its economy still depends heavily on cotton, so the word “entirely” alone was enough to make the statement false.
The mistake is reading past words like that instead of treating them as a warning sign the moment you see them.
Completion mistake: copying more than the blank needs
The passage will often contain the right answer sitting right next to a word that isn’t part of it. Test 11 asked what Soviet planners expanded cultivation of; the passage said “dramatically expand cotton cultivation” — but the answer was just “cotton.” Copying “dramatically expand cotton” would have broken the two-word limit.
The mistake is copying a whole phrase instead of checking exactly what the sentence around the blank still needs.
Matching Headings mistake: matching a word instead of an idea
Several headings on every Matching Headings question are near-misses, built from a word that appears in the paragraph but isn’t what the paragraph is actually about. Test 11’s Paragraph A mentioned fishing, port towns, and the sea’s size — but the correct heading matched its overall point, that the sea “once sustained a thriving regional economy,” not any single detail inside it.
The mistake is picking the first heading that shares a word with the paragraph, before checking whether it actually matches the paragraph’s main idea.
The one habit that fixes most of them
Read the exact words immediately around the blank or statement before you go hunting in the passage — what’s already given, what kind of word is missing, whether the claim uses an absolute word like “all” or “entirely.” That one habit catches the word-limit trap, the absolute-language trap, and the near-miss heading, because all three are really the same error: reading the passage before reading the question closely enough.
DEB
4 mistakes to watch for