B2 First · Grammar · Pattern 2 of 10
'Have / get something done' — arranging for someone else to do it. One shape, every tense, and the word order is the whole test.
1 of 8
A mechanic is repairing Jack's car at the moment.
HAVING
Jack at the moment.
The causative says that you arranged a job rather than doing it: 'Emma had her hair cut' means a hairdresser did it. The structure is always the same — have or get, then the object, then the past participle — and Part 4 tests whether you can hold that order under pressure while also putting 'have' into the right tense.
It appears in every tense the passive does, because it is a passive in disguise. 'Is having his car repaired', 'had her hair cut', 'is going to have his tooth taken out', 'will have the furniture delivered' — the participle sits still at the end while 'have' does the work.
Word order. 'Emma had cut her hair' is grammatical English and means she did it herself — which is exactly not what the first sentence said. The object has to sit between 'had' and the participle. Candidates who know the structure still lose the mark by writing the participle too early.
The second loss is the word count. 'Had our living room decorated' is five words, the maximum. Add 'by a painter' and you are at eight, and the item scores zero however good the grammar is. If the agent is already in the second sentence after the gap, leave it there.
Ask who did the job. If it was a professional and the sentence is about the person who paid, the answer is causative. Write 'have' in the tense of the first sentence, then the thing, then the third form of the verb. 'Get' is the informal twin and appears with the key word GET or GOT — same shape, same order.
Watch for a participle that is already in the second sentence. 'I ____ translated' means the gap ends before the participle: 'need to have this document'. The structure has been split across the gap on purpose.
In meaning, yes — both say you arranged for the work to be done. 'Get' is a little more informal and a little more active ('we should get the roof checked' hints that it needs organising). The exam accepts either unless the key word fixes one of them.
Yes, and it is a favourite C1 twist: 'She had her bag stolen' means it happened to her, not that she arranged it. At B2 the items stay with the arranged meaning, but the grammar is identical, so the drill prepares you for both.
