What B2 First Use of English Really Tests

Most people prepare for B2 First Use of English with a long word list and a set of translations. Then they sit down to Part 1, recognise every word on the page and still cannot choose between the verbs on offer. Each of the four Use of English tasks tests a different kind of vocabulary knowledge, and a list of headwords trains only the first of them, which is rarely the one a gap turns on. In this post we go through Parts 1 to 4: how each task looks on the page, what it really tests, real cards from our English B2 First Exam Kit with the mistakes their notes warn about, and one study habit per part. For how many words to learn in total and a daily plan, see our post on how many words you need for B2 First. This one is about the kind of knowing that earns the marks.

Four Use of English tasks, four kinds of word knowledge

The Reading and Use of English paper lasts 75 minutes and has seven parts. Four of them are Use of English: a multiple-choice cloze, an open cloze, word formation and key word transformations. The other three are reading texts. That makes Use of English the place in the exam where vocabulary is marked most directly, one gap at a time.

It helps to think of knowing a word as several separate skills. You can know what decision means. You can also know which verb goes with it, which small word follows it, how to build it from decide, how to spell it and which sentence patterns it fits into. A typical word list trains the first skill and none of the others. Each Use of English part leans on a different one:

The rest of this post takes the four parts in order.

Part 1 multiple-choice cloze: same meaning, wrong partner

Part 1 is a short text with gaps, and for each gap you get a choice of four words. The catch is that the options often mean roughly the same thing. If the gap sits in front of a decision, every verb on offer may describe doing or acting, but only one is the word English actually puts next to decision. That is collocation, and three cards from our collocations deck show how it works.

make a decision: "The council will make a decision about the new cycle lanes next month." The note on the card: "English MAKES a decision: *do a decision is a classic error." It adds that take a decision exists in British English, but make is far more common and always safe in the exam, and that the decision is about or on something.

make a mistake: "I made a mistake on the booking form and had to phone the hotel." The note calls *do a mistake "one of the most frequent learner errors" and adds two neighbours you may need: a mistake in something, and by mistake, meaning accidentally.

make an effort: "If you make an effort to speak the language, people are much friendlier." This note warns twice. *Do an effort is wrong, and so is *make an effort for speaking, because the phrase takes a to-infinitive.

None of these mistakes is about meaning. Someone who writes *do a mistake knows exactly what a mistake is. French, Spanish and Polish each use one verb (faire, hacer, robić) where English splits the work between make and do, and German has both machen and tun but draws the line in a different place. So the wrong verb feels natural, which is what makes it a good wrong option.

Study habit: learn nouns with their verb, and group them by verb. When you meet a new noun, ask not "what does it mean?" but "what do you do with it?". A short run of make cards (a decision, a mistake, an effort, progress, a difference, a complaint) does more for Part 1 than fifty new nouns on their own.

Part 2 open cloze tips: the small words carry the marks

Part 2 is also a text with gaps, but this time there are no options. You write the missing word yourself, one word per gap. The words that go missing are mostly the short grammatical ones: prepositions, articles, pronouns, linking words and the fixed part of a phrase. The task tests whether you know what a word needs around it, and four groups come up again and again in our cards.

Connectors. The card for despite has the example "Despite feeling nervous, she gave an excellent presentation." Its note: "Despite is never followed by 'of': *despite of the rain is one of the commonest errors." Learn it next to in spite of: same meaning, but only one takes of.

Dependent prepositions. "The price depends on how early you book." The note: "'Depend on' is fixed; *depend of and *depend from are common errors." The same goes for interested in ("More young people are interested in politics than before"), where the note also warns that *I am interesting in art means something quite different.

Articles. "She plays the violin in an orchestra" is a card because the rule slips away under pressure: instruments take the after play, while sports and games take no article, as in play tennis or play chess.

Relative pronouns. "That's the man whose dog bit me." The note warns that whose is not who's, which means who is or who has. Another card reminds you that after a comma only which works for things: "We spent a weekend in Bath, which is famous for its Roman baths."

Study habit: never let a card hold a word without its small word. Write depend on and interested in, not depend and interested. And when you read in English, take one paragraph, cover the prepositions and articles, and fill them back in. It takes five minutes and it is close to the real task.

Word formation in B2 First: families and spelling traps

Part 3 is a text with gaps where each gap comes with a stem word in capitals. You change the stem into the form the sentence needs: a noun, an adjective, an adverb, sometimes a negative or a plural. The meaning is usually obvious. The task tests whether you know the whole family and can spell the member you need.

Our card for DECIDE is a good example. "After weeks of discussion, the committee finally reached a ___ about the new sports centre." The answer is decision, and the note lays out the family: decide, decision, decisive, indecisive, decisively. It then names the two traps: -de becomes -sion, and the adjective is decisive, not *decidive.

EXPLAIN works the same way: "The instructions came with a clear ___ of how to set up the printer." The note: "The noun loses the 'i' of explain: *explaination is one of the commonest Part 3 spelling errors." DESCRIBE has its own version, where the b turns into p before -tion and *describtion is the usual slip.

Then there is the -ise family, which matters because our kit uses British English. modernise comes from MODERN ("The railway company has promised to modernise its old trains"), apologise from APOLOGY and memorise from MEMORY. The notes give the American -ize spelling too, and the modernise card says either is accepted in the exam as long as you use it consistently. The real trap in this group is the stem: the y of apology and memory disappears before -ise.

Study habit: practise word formation by typing, not by recognising. You can recognise explanation on sight for years and still write *explaination when you have to produce it from the stem. A gap that shows EXPLAIN in brackets and makes you type the noun trains exactly what Part 3 marks.

Key word transformations: structures in 2 to 5 words

Part 4 gives you a sentence, a key word in capitals and a second sentence with a gap. You complete the second sentence so that it means the same as the first, using between two and five words, including the key word. You must not change the key word, and contractions count as two words, so needn't uses two of your five.

This is the part where single words help least. Part 4 tests whether you can carry a meaning from one structure into another: active to passive, a plain statement to a reporting structure, although to despite. Four cards from our transformations deck cover moves worth having ready.

is said to be: the castle example above. For an earlier action, the note adds, you need the perfect infinitive: is said to have been built.

had my bike stolen: "Someone stole my bike from outside the library. → I ___ from outside the library (HAD)." The note: word order is have + object + past participle, and candidates often write *had stolen my bike, "which means you were the thief".

need not have bought: "I bought lots of food, but it wasn't necessary because everyone had already eaten. → I ___ so much food (NEED)." The note draws the line that matters here: needn't have done means you did it and it was unnecessary, while didn't need to do usually means it was unnecessary, so you probably did not do it. Written as needn't have bought, the answer is still four words, because the contraction counts as two.

despite the fact that: "The festival went ahead despite the fact that several bands had cancelled." The note: "In Part 4 it is a common way to rewrite an 'although' sentence when DESPITE is the key word." It is how you put a subject and verb after despite.

Study habit: learn transformations as pairs, so the card trains the move and not just the result. Before you check an answer, count the words. Six words breaks the rule, however good the grammar.

How to practise Use of English with flashcards

Flashcards work well for Use of English if the cards are built for it. Three choices make the difference.

Write the collocation on the card, not the single word. Decision on its own trains the meaning you already know. Make a decision trains the partner Part 1 asks about.

Use cloze cards for Parts 2 to 4. A cloze card hides one piece of a real sentence (the preposition, the derived form, the transformed structure) and asks you to supply it. That is the exam task in miniature. Our word formation cards show the stem as the hint, and the transformation cards show the key word and the number of words, so each review is a small Part 3 or Part 4 question.

Type your answers so spelling counts. Recognising the right answer when you see it is not what Use of English asks of you. In Words on Repeat the recall study mode asks you to type a card's word from memory and marks the letters you got wrong, and the kit's Gap fill drill does the same for the word formation and transformation gaps, with the stem or the key word in brackets, so you find out whether you write explanation or *explaination before the exam does.

The Exam Kit decks behind Parts 1 to 4

We built the English B2 First Exam Kit around these tasks, and five of its decks map straight onto them:

• Collocations, 250 cards, for Part 1 and the fixed phrases in Part 2
• Phrasal verbs for Use of English, 247 cards, including the swaps Part 4 likes, such as cancelled to called off
• Word formation, 150 cards, for Part 3
• Connectors and linking, 100 cards, for the open cloze and the although to despite rewrites
• Key word transformations and grammar, 180 cards, for Part 4 and the articles and relative pronouns in Part 2

The kit uses British English throughout, so the cards spell modernise and apologise. When you type an answer in the Gap fill drill, both -ise and -ize are accepted, because Cambridge accepts both. Every card has an example sentence, a short English definition and, where learners tend to slip, a note on the usual mistake, like the ones quoted in this post. Two independent AI review passes checked every card.

You can study 20 sample cards for free without signing up, and the vocabulary check gives you an estimate of how much of the kit you already know before you start.

Words on Repeat is not affiliated with Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

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