B2 First · Reading & Use of English · Part 2
Think of the one word that fits each gap — grammar in focus.
Eight gaps, no options, one word each — and the answer is almost never a content word. This part tests the machinery of English: articles, auxiliaries, prepositions, relative pronouns, parts of fixed phrases, the second half of a comparative. If you find yourself wanting to write a noun or a full verb, you have probably misread the structure.
That makes it the most learnable part of the paper, because the answer set is small. The same few dozen words fill most gaps across every paper ever written. Work through exercises noting which *kind* of word each answer was rather than which word, and the patterns become visible fast: "this gap needs a relative pronoun" is a far more useful thought than "this gap needs 'which'".
At B2 the structures are the everyday ones: articles, auxiliaries in perfect and continuous forms, comparatives, relative clauses, and the prepositions that follow common verbs and adjectives. If a gap is resisting you, work out the grammar of the sentence first and the word usually falls out of it.
Only if it counts as one word, and contractions generally do not — "don't" is read as two words. Write the full form. Spelling is marked, so an answer that is right but misspelled scores nothing.
Re-read the full sentence with each one. Usually one breaks a fixed phrase or a grammatical agreement further along the line. If both genuinely work, either will normally be accepted — the mark scheme allows for alternatives where the grammar permits them.
