WAEC English: Beat the Traps in Lexis, Structure and Oral English

Most marks lost in WAEC English Language aren't lost to hard questions. They go to the same handful of traps, repeated across lexis, structure and the test of orals. This guide names those traps, shows you how examiners build them, and gives you a routine to beat them.

1. Lexis: meaning in context

Lexis questions test vocabulary, but in a sentence, never in isolation.

• Synonyms and antonyms. Read the whole sentence first. "The minister's speech was lucid." The word closest in meaning is clear. "Bright" is a trap: it suits "lucid" in other contexts, not this one.
• Idioms. Learn them as whole units. "Tunde is a wet blanket at parties" means he spoils other people's fun. It has nothing to do with water or bedding.
• Words that look alike. Affect (verb) and effect (usually a noun); principal (main, or a school head) and principle (a rule); stationary (not moving) and stationery (writing materials).

Routine: cover the options, decide what the gap should mean, then find the option that matches your meaning.

2. Structure: grammar that WAEC loves

• Concord with "neither … nor" and "either … or". The verb agrees with the nearer subject. "Neither the teacher nor the students were ready."
• "Each", "every", "one of". These take a singular verb. "Each of the boys has his own book." "One of the cars is missing."
• Tense sequence. A past main verb usually needs a past verb in the reported clause. "She said that she was tired."
• Question tags. A positive statement takes a negative tag, and the other way round. "You are coming, aren't you?" "He hardly works, does he?" ("hardly" counts as negative.)
• Prepositions and phrasal verbs. Congratulate someone on something; comply with; look forward to seeing you (not "to see").

Routine: find the subject of the verb first. Most structure traps hide the true subject behind a long phrase: "The box of oranges on the shelves is heavy."

3. Test of orals: sounds, stress and intonation

You can't hear the examiner, so you need the rules.

• Vowel contrasts. Long and short pairs come up constantly: bead /iː/ and bid /ɪ/; pool /uː/ and pull /ʊ/; cart /ɑː/ and cut /ʌ/.
• Consonant traps. "th" in think (/θ/) differs from this (/ð/). The final -ed is pronounced /t/ in walked, /d/ in played, and /ɪd/ in wanted.
• Word stress. It moves when the word family changes: PHOtograph, phoTOgraphy, photoGRAPHic. Many two-syllable words are stressed on the first syllable as nouns and the second as verbs: a REcord / to reCORD; a PREsent / to preSENT.
• Emphatic stress. The word in capitals answers a hidden question. "JOHN bought the car" answers "Who bought it?", not "What did he buy?"

Routine: say the word quietly in your head with each option's stress, then pick the one that sounds natural to a careful speaker, not to street speech.

4. A four-week plan

1. Week 1: one lexis set a day (20 questions), plus five idioms learnt as phrases.
2. Week 2: structure: concord, tense and question tags, 20 questions a day, writing down why each wrong option is wrong.
3. Week 3: orals: vowel pairs, the -ed rule and stress shifts, with 15 questions a day.
4. Week 4: full timed objective papers. Review every miss and add it to a personal "trap list".

Practise it

Twenty questions a day is enough to see a real difference in four weeks. Practise WAEC English free on AceWAEC, and read the explanation for every question you get wrong, not only the ones you guessed.