Aptitude skill lesson
Written communication: skill lesson
Written communication is assessed in two quite different ways: multiple-choice sentence-correction and proofreading items that test whether you can name and fix a specific grammatical fault, and free-text exercises - an email, an incident note, a briefing - marked on structure, accuracy and tone. It appears in clerical and administrative entry tests, legal support and paralegal batteries, teacher selection, public relations sifts, and any role where a badly worded sentence becomes somebody else's problem. The two formats reward the same underlying skill: knowing what a sentence claims and making it claim exactly that. Practice is device-local, with no account and nothing uploaded unless you export it.
Published · last reviewed
Applies to Novus Learn 0.1.0
What changed, and when
- , Replaced the body of all 27 non-judgement lessons with construct-specific material: six worked examples each, carrying the actual arithmetic, the actual inference or the actual procedure, plus expanded objectives, practice tips and glossary. Every 'Related Learn topics' link now points at a real page on this site rather than a generic search. The eight workplace-judgement lessons are unchanged.
- , Rebuilt the lesson page around a sticky contents rail, per-section links, previous/next lesson navigation, and two graded checkpoints drawn from the open practice bank.
- , Repaired the aptitude integrations behind the lessons so each one links to skill-specific practice instead of the unscoped fixture engine.
- , Published one lesson for each of the 35 aptitude skill constructs: objectives, worked examples, practice tips, glossary, Learn topic links, and sources.
These 35 skill lessons are authored and revised as one set, so they share one revision history rather than 35 identical dates.
Objectives
Copy link- Resolve subject-verb agreement across an intervening phrase, and apply the proximity rule for neither/nor and the singular-plural split between 'the number of' and 'a number of'.
- Identify and repair dangling and misplaced modifiers, including the placement of limiting words such as 'only'.
- Enforce parallel grammatical form across items in a list or a set of bullets.
- Recognise a comma splice and choose among the four legitimate repairs, including the case where 'however' is involved.
- Rewrite nominalised, hedged official prose into plain language while preserving the recommendation and its condition.
- Draft the same facts for three different readers, and keep observation separate from inference in a record that may be read back later.
Checkpoint: does the idea land?
Copy linkBefore the worked examples, check that the objectives above actually landed.
Two questions from the open practice bank, answered here and scored on this device. Untimed, ungraded, and not added to your practice history, the full bank is where attempts are recorded.
Examples
Copy linkAgreement: find the head noun, then decide
'The set of quarterly returns filed by the three regional offices (was / were) incomplete.' The subject is 'the set', which is singular, so 'was' is correct; 'offices' is merely the nearest noun, sitting inside a prepositional phrase that cannot supply the subject. Strike out everything between the head noun and the verb and the choice becomes obvious - 'the set was incomplete'. Next: 'Neither the manager nor the two supervisors (was / were) informed.' With neither/nor the verb agrees with the nearer of the two subjects, and the nearer one here is 'the two supervisors', so 'were' is correct. Reverse the order - 'Neither the two supervisors nor the manager was informed' - and the correct verb flips to singular, which is a useful check that you are applying the rule rather than guessing. Finally, a pair that trips experienced writers: 'A number of applications are missing' is correct, because 'a number of' functions as a plural quantifier, while 'The number of applications is rising' is also correct, because there 'the number' is a single quantity. Same three words, opposite verbs.
Dangling modifiers and the wandering 'only'
'Having reviewed the tender documents, the deadline was extended by two weeks.' An opening participial phrase attaches to the subject of the main clause, and the subject here is 'the deadline', so the sentence says the deadline reviewed the documents. It reads acceptably aloud because a listener silently supplies the missing actor, which is precisely why this error survives proofreading. Two clean fixes: name the actor as the subject - 'Having reviewed the tender documents, the panel extended the deadline by two weeks' - or drop the participle entirely - 'The panel reviewed the tender documents and extended the deadline by two weeks.' Now the limiting word. 'We only sent the invoice to three suppliers' literally says that sending was the only thing we did to those three. 'We sent the invoice to only three suppliers' says we sent it to no more than three. 'We sent only the invoice to three suppliers' says we sent nothing else. Three placements, three meanings, one word - put 'only', 'just', 'even' and 'almost' immediately before what they limit, and in a marked item the four options usually differ by nothing else.
Parallelism in a list
'The role involves drafting reports, client liaison, and to maintain the case register.' Three items in three different grammatical forms: a gerund phrase, a noun phrase, and an infinitive. The repair is to pick one form and hold it: 'The role involves drafting reports, liaising with clients, and maintaining the case register.' Parallelism is worth its own item type because it is the most visible marker of careless list writing, and because real documents fail on it constantly - a bulleted list where two bullets start with a verb and the third starts with a noun, or a set of headings mixing questions and statements. The same rule governs correlative pairs: 'not only ... but also' must join two grammatically matching elements, so 'The report not only covers spending but also staffing' is faulty, and 'The report covers not only spending but also staffing' is correct, because the correlatives now bracket two nouns rather than a verb phrase and a noun.
Comma splice, and why 'however' is not a rescue
'The system was offline for six hours, no backup was available.' Two independent clauses joined by a comma is a comma splice, and there are four legitimate repairs. Use a full stop: 'The system was offline for six hours. No backup was available.' Use a semicolon, which signals the two facts belong together. Add a coordinating conjunction after the comma: '... six hours, and no backup was available.' Or subordinate one clause: 'Because no backup was available, the six-hour outage could not be mitigated.' The trap is the fifth option that people reach for instinctively: 'The system was offline for six hours, however no backup was available.' However is a conjunctive adverb, not a coordinating conjunction, so it cannot join two independent clauses with a comma - the sentence is still spliced. It needs a semicolon or full stop before 'however' and a comma after it. The same applies to therefore, moreover, nevertheless, and consequently, which is why they appear so often in sentence-correction distractors.
Plain language: 37 words down to 14
Before: 'It is the recommendation of this department that consideration be given to the deferral of the implementation of the new filing procedure until such time as adequate training provision has been made available to all affected staff.' That is thirty-seven words. After: 'We recommend delaying the new filing procedure until all affected staff have been trained.' Fourteen. Look at what the rewrite actually did: it turned three nominalisations back into verbs (recommendation to recommend, deferral to delaying, provision to trained), it named the actor instead of hiding behind 'this department', and it cut 'consideration be given to' and 'until such time as', which carry no content at all. Look just as carefully at what it kept: the recommendation, the thing being delayed, and the condition that ends the delay. Plain-language items are marked on meaning preservation, not on brevity alone, and the standard wrong answer is the over-cut version - 'We recommend delaying the new procedure' - which reads beautifully and silently deletes the condition that is the substance of the recommendation. Trim the packaging, never the payload.
One incident, three readers, and the fact-inference line
Facts: the gate camera timestamps a van leaving at 11:42:00; the weighbridge camera, 300 m along the yard road, timestamps the same van at 11:42:15; the yard limit is 20 km/h. The arithmetic: 300 m in 15 s is 20 m/s, and 20 x 3.6 = 72 km/h. Now write it three ways. In the incident record: 'Vehicle VT-118 passed the gate camera at 11:42:00 and the weighbridge camera at 11:42:15. The cameras are 300 m apart, giving an average speed of 72 km/h over that section. The posted yard limit is 20 km/h.' Note what is absent: 'the driver was speeding', which is a conclusion, and 'was travelling at 72 km/h', which overstates the evidence - the figure is an average over the section, not an instantaneous speed. To the yard supervisor: lead with the decision needed and the deadline. 'Two camera timestamps put VT-118 at an average 72 km/h in a 20 km/h yard yesterday morning. I have attached the record. Can you confirm by Friday whether this goes to the safety review?' To the driver's employer: lead with the specific, verifiable reference - vehicle, date, time, the two camera points - and the single action requested. Same facts every time; what changes is which fact leads, and in a written-communication assessment the most apologetic option is rarely the best one, while any option that names blame in a record that has not been reviewed is usually the worst.
Checkpoint: can you apply it?
Copy linkNow apply it. These come from a later section of the bank, so they are not more of the same.
Two questions from the open practice bank, answered here and scored on this device. Untimed, ungraded, and not added to your practice history, the full bank is where attempts are recorded.
Practice tips
Copy link- Proofread in separate passes, one error class at a time - agreement, then modifiers, then punctuation, then numbers and names. A single pass looking for 'anything wrong' reliably finds fewer errors than three narrow passes taking the same total time.
- Read your draft aloud, or subvocalise it. Comma splices, dropped words and lost parallelism are audible even when they are invisible; dangling modifiers are the exception, which is why they need a deliberate check of what each opening phrase attaches to.
- On sentence-correction items, diagnose before you choose. Name the fault in the original in three words, then look for the option that fixes exactly that and introduces nothing new. Options that fix the fault while adding a second one are standard.
- Read every option to the end. Sentence-correction distractors commonly differ from the correct answer only in the last two or three words, and candidates who stop once the opening looks right lose marks they never see.
- For free-text tasks, spend the first minute on a three-line plan: purpose, the single action you want from the reader, and the deadline. Untimed free-text answers are usually well written and structurally shapeless, and structure is what the mark scheme can see.
- Keep a personal error list of the mistakes you actually make rather than a generic grammar checklist. Most writers repeat three or four faults, and proofreading against your own four is far faster than proofreading against forty.
Glossary
Copy link- Subject-verb agreement
- The requirement that the verb match the grammatical number of the subject's head noun, not of the nearest noun. Long prepositional phrases between the two are the standard way this is tested.
- Dangling modifier
- An introductory phrase whose implied actor is not the subject of the main clause, so the sentence attributes the action to the wrong thing. Fixed by naming the actor as the subject or by rewriting the phrase as a full clause.
- Parallelism
- Matching grammatical form across items in a list or across correlative pairs such as not only / but also. The commonest breach mixes gerunds, nouns and infinitives in a single series.
- Comma splice
- Two independent clauses joined only by a comma. Repaired with a full stop, a semicolon, a coordinating conjunction, or subordination - never by inserting however, therefore or moreover after the comma.
- Nominalisation
- A verb converted into a noun - implement becomes implementation, decide becomes decision. Nominalised prose hides who does what and typically doubles the word count for the same content.
- Register
- The level of formality and the vocabulary appropriate to a particular reader and purpose. A message can be grammatically perfect and still wrong in register, which is what free-text tasks are largely marking.
- Active and passive voice
- Active names the actor before the verb; passive can omit the actor entirely. Passive is legitimate when the actor is unknown or genuinely irrelevant, and evasive when it is used to avoid naming a responsible party.
- Observation versus inference
- An observation is what a camera, meter or witness recorded; an inference is the conclusion drawn from it. Records that mix the two are hard to defend later, because the conclusion cannot be separated from its basis.
Sources
Copy link- Worked items written for Novus Learn. Every faulty sentence, rewrite, word count and incident figure above is original and invented for this lesson; no published or copyrighted test item is reproduced.
- Grammatical terminology follows standard, widely published usage - subject-verb agreement, dangling modifier, parallelism, comma splice, nominalisation.
- Novus Learn aptitude construct registry (catalog seed) for the construct scope and the suite mapping shown in the related links.
- Public educational framing only - not affiliated with any official exam board, publisher or employer.
Your notebook for this lesson
Saved sections and notes are kept in this browser, on this device. No account is required, and nothing is sent to us unless you create one and switch on backup. They travel with your backup file from My Learning, and they are lost if you clear this site’s data.
Saved sections
None yet. Use Save beside any section heading above to keep it here.
4000 characters left
Your own words, so you can find this again from any other lesson. Up to 12.