Understanding Parts of Speech for VR

Verbal Reasoning can be very challenging for second language English speakers. This is because it requires both excellent vocabulary and problem-solving ability. A particular area of confusion can be around parts of speech, especially for native Mandarin speakers. The difference between 'confidence' and 'confident', for example, is subtle but crucial in addressing verbal reasoning questions. Here are some ways parts of speech can help your child in a test.

Identifying antonyms

Select the words that are antonyms from the two sets of brackets.

(ice, cold, dark) (hot, old, sun)

Counter initiatively, for a word to be the antonym of another, it has to be the same part of speech. For example, 'hot' and 'cold' are both adjectives. A common mistake is to think words that 'feel' opposite are antonyms. An example of this might be 'ice' and 'hot'. Although to a child, these instinctively seem opposite, they cannot be, as 'ice' is a noun and 'hot' is an adjective.

Word transformations

Arctic is to cold as Desert is to
(hot, sun, sand)

Upon first inspection, all the options seem to be related to the desert as the word 'cold' is related to arctic. Crucially, however, we can use parts of speech to unpack the problem. 'Arctic' and 'desert' are both nouns, and 'cold' is an adjective. This means that the second option is likely to be an adjective describing a 'desert'. This allows us to rule out the nouns 'sun' and 'sand' and select the adjective 'hot'.

Ruling out wrong answers

Select the two words most similar in meaning

(emotion, sad, angry)  (________ment, _______ly, happy)

How can we possibly guess between two words we don't know? This example is designed to simulate a situation your child might find themselves in, where they don't know two words. They can still have a good guess using parts of speech. We know that 'emotion' is a noun, 'sad' is and adjective and 'angry' is an adjective too. We know that words ending in '-ment' are likely to be nouns, '-ly' are likely to be adverbs and we know the word 'happy' is an adjective. We can then deduce that the answer has to be 'emotion' and '______ment' as their parts of speech match and we know that sad and angry don't mean the same as the adjective in the second brackets, 'happy'.

Here are just three ways learning parts of speech in your child's vocabulary studies can help them achieve better results in verbal reasoning assessments. To learn more about our approach, please get in touch with us!