Can you tell the difference between historic and historical?

When do you use accept and when do you use except?

Further and Farther? Sensual and Sensuous?

For the last four years the CAT has been testing aspirants on this particular type of vocabulary question. These types of questions can be labelled as Commonly Confused Words.

Format: Typically a sentence is given which has a blank. Two alternatives are provided for filling up the blank. The aspirant has to use his/her knowledge of English vocabulary to select the right word to fit into the blank. Of course this being the CAT – it does not stop at that – one has to solve 5 sentences like these to be able to arrive at one correct answer! Which means that you have to solve all the sentences very carefully. Even if you get one of the sentences wrong the correct answers in all the other sentences would not fetch any marks.

Sample question from CAT 2007

Sentences

1.Regrettably / Regretfully I have to decline your invitation.

2.I am drawn to the poetic, sensual / sensuous quality of her paintings.

3.He was besides / beside himself with rage when I told him what I had done.

4.After brushing against a stationary / stationery truck my car turned turtle.

5.As the water began to rise over / above the danger mark, the signs of an imminent flood were

clear.

Answer Choices

(1) BAABA (2) BBBAB (3) AAABA (4) BBAAB (5) BABAB

As you can see in the above question you have to pick the right word for the blanks in Sentences 1-5 and the correct combination among the Answer Choices 1-5 has to be selected.

Practice: The question before us is to how to practice these types of questions as they are not available as a separate topic in any grammar book as such. In such a difficult situation we turn to the Internet for help.

a) Wikipedia: Our first stop is the Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a page with a list of English words which are commonly misused. The list of words are alphabetically arranged. It discusses the meaning of the words and uses the words in a sentence in the right way as well as non standard constructions.

Example from Wikipedia,

• accept and except. While they sound similar (or even identical), except is a preposition that means “apart from”, while accept is a verb that means “agree with”, “take in”, or “receive”. Except is also occasionally used as a verb, meaning to take out or to leave out.
  • Standard: We accept all major credit cards, except Diners Club.
  • Standard: Men are fools… present company excepted! (Which means, “present company excluded”)
  • Non-standard: I had trouble making friends with them; I never felt excepted.
  • Non-standard: We all went swimming, accept for Jack.

b) Google: If you type the phrase “Commonly Confused Words” into Google, you should get access to the following resources for CCW.

(i) Oxford Dictionary has a page on this topic – http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/easilyconfused – which is in the following format and has roughly 65-70 word pairs.

(ii) Edufind.com – http://www.edufind.com/english/writing/easily_confused_words.cfm – This too has a listing of pairs of easily confused of words. The advantage is that the meaning is not given on the page itself but rather is in the following format

Once you have taken a look at the words defuse and diffuse and decided what they mean – you can press the review button and it gives you the difference between the the two words in this form,

(iii) ABOUT.COM – A number of quizzes are presented on about.com for identifying CCW. The advantage here is that the words are not stand-alone but appear in sentences as they would appear in the CAT. A look at the link http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/bl_confusing1.htm shows us the following,

Q: The _____ applauded enthusiastically after the performance was finished.

(a) audience

(b) spectators

You can keep marking your answers and get your score at the end of the the quiz. Other Links on about.com which may be useful for CCW are,

a) http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/bl_homophone1.htm

b) http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/bl_homophone2.htm

c) http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/bl_confusing2.htm

c) As usual there is no place like Pagalguy for your prep work and a casual look at a couple of threads reveals a rich source of CCW.

Examples from PG Threads,

moot:Subject to debate; arguable

E.g: a moot question.

moor: To make fast (a vessel, for example) by means of cables, anchors, or lines

E.g: moor a ship to a dock.

——————————————————————————————–

amended:To remove the faults or errors in; correct.

E.g.: President amended the earlier proposal so as to make it more comprehensive.

emended:To improve by critical editing:

E.g.: emend a faulty text.

——————————————————————————————–

ingenious**:Marked by inventive skill and imagination.

E.g: an ingenious scheme

igneous: Of, relating to, or characteristic of fire.

E.g.:an igneous desert atmosphere.

——————————————————————————————–

prudent: Wise in handling practical matters; exercising good judgment or common sense.

E.g.: a prudent manager

prudish: Marked by or exhibiting the characteristics of a prude(One who is excessive);

E.g. prudish lady

PG Threads for reference purpose,

1. https://testing.pagalguy.com/discussions/commonly-confused-words-25044418

2. https://testing.pagalguy.com/discussions/confusing-english-words-25051429

d) Books – If you are attending coaching classes you will find that they also provide you with a list of CCW in their Grammar Books. Apart from this, a good book to follow for these types of questions is Better English by Normal Lewis.

e) Mock CATS: Since these questions have been coming in the CAT you will find that you will be frequently asked these types of questions in the Mocks . As discussed in my previous article on Mock CAT analysis – maintain a database of these CCW and you will find the databank extremely helpful for revision purpose when the CAT is just round the corner!

I am sure that if you tapped the above sources well you will be exposed to a variety of CCW and will confidently sale through the CCW. Oh! That should have been sail!

Tanveer Ahmed is an alumnus of St Xaviers College, Kolkata and currently works with a people search firm as a recruiter. He is a visiting faculty with T.I.M.E. and also coaches and mentors CAT hopefuls online in the intricacies of the English language. (On LinkedIn)

If you think you have what it takes to write interesting articles of the above kind on CAT strategy and have a past record of 99 percentiles in mocks, we are looking for Freelance test prep writers. Feel free to apply and well be happy to hear from you!