WRITING PAPER

WRITING, PART 1: SENTENCE TRANSFORMATION

This part of the PET test in quite challenging since candidates have to cope with grammatical structures they have to learn and practice in use. Rephrasing and reformulating is essential, as it is in the whole PET exam. 

Here, you will have to transform 5 sentences. The five items are theme-related (all of them talk about the same topic: see example below). You have to fill in the gap with the appropriate words so that the second sentence means the same as the first.

Here you'll find the presentations you need to prepare this part of the test, with grammatical explanations of each possible structure which occur in Writing part 1, as well as a lot of practice to test your progress. 

Here you have an example: 

Here are some sentences about a swimming pool:

 For each question, complete the second sentences so that it means the same as the first.

 Use no more trhan three words. 

1. It's six months since I last went swimming. 

          

                          HAVE NOT

I...................................................................been swimming for six months. 

In this example, the first sentence means that the lñast time when the speaker went swimming was six months ago, therefore, the action began in the past and still continues in the present. In English, to talk about actions that began in the past and go aup to the present, THE PRESENT PERFECT TENSE (SIMPLE OR CONTINUOUS) is used. 

The structure used is: It's + period of time+ SINCE (desde)+ a sentence in simple past. 

The translation of the answers is NOT:

"No he estado nadando durante seis meses" 

BUT

"no nado desde hace seis meses". 

Another typical transformation is this one:

2. The new pool is near to my home.

                      

                              FAR FROM

It's not.........................................................the new pool to my home. 

The opposite of NEAR=NOT FAR, which is always followed by FROM.