FCE Use of English Part 4, Test 7

Answers and explanations

1. Give her a hand. While ‘to offer a hand’ is a well-known phrase, using it in this context doesn’t make sense as you cannot ask somebody to offer you something.
2. I were you I would. Here, we are looking a structure of an imaginary, unreal situation. The plural ‘were’ is often used to convey this idea, e.g. ‘If we were to decide, we would make/would have made a better choice’.
3. Appointed to this position by. A regular active-to-passive voice transformation. Be aware that ‘appoint as’ is used in a context where the title or the position is stated explicitly, e.g. ‘Judy was appointed as the head of our department’.
4. Was not a surprise/Came as no surprise. Answering ‘Did not surprise’ is incorrect as the last part of the sentence goes ‘to me’, so you are forced to use the keyword as a noun, not as a verb.
5. Advised (me) against/Advised (me) to avoid. Both options work well with the -ing form of ‘spend’ that comes right after the gap. ‘To advise against’ means to suggest that somebody shouldn’t be doing something. Make sure to spell ‘advise’ correctly, as a very similar word ‘advice’ is a noun, whereas we are looking for a verb here.
6. Will it take you. The phrase ‘take you’ refers to how much time somebody needs for something, e.g. ‘it didn’t take me long to realise I wasn’t invited to the party’.
7. Had better fix. Note that this is not a case of Past Perfect tense, even though it might look like one. Keeping this in mind, we do not need to put the verb in the Past Participle form.
8. Did not get/Have not got used to. While ‘still’ normally accompanies a Present Perfect form (‘still haven’t got’), it is acceptable to use Past Simple here (‘still did not get’) as the original sentence does not explicitly limit us in the choice of tense. Note that ‘I still am not used…’ is incorrect as ‘still’ should be put after the auxiliary ‘am’.
9. You got rid of. Contrary to the previous sentence, our choice in this one is dictated by ‘have’ just before the gap. It forces us to stick to the Present Perfect form.
10. Is always taking. The biggest difficulty here is to understand that we have to use Present Continuous to express how annoyed we are with his habit. As a general rule, the structure ‘always + -ing verb’ is used to show that we dislike somebody’s repeated action or manner of doing something.