Vocabulary Practice Answers No.01082017

Quick Read: This answer page belongs to the 2017 Primary 6 vocabulary worksheet No. 01082017. The useful skill is not memorising ten answers. It is learning how a reader proves that one word fits a sentence better than another by checking meaning, grammar, collocation, register, tone and situation.

The title and URL are preserved as part of the eduKateSingapore archive. The library edition turns the old answer sheet into a worked reference article for vocabulary practice, vocabulary worksheet answers, Primary 6 vocabulary, PSLE English vocabulary, vocabulary in context, synonyms and antonyms, collocation and word choice. These are strong search terms for eduKateSingapore because vocabulary and English-by-paper sit inside this site’s library ownership.

The Ten Answers at a Glance

No.	Answer	Decisive evidence
1	confide	The natural pattern is confide in someone, and the context involves a serious private problem.
2	hire	A lawyer is engaged to provide a professional service; the sentence also mentions cost.
3	loser	The structure “calling someone a ___” requires a noun for a person; the sentence then rejects the label.
4	drop off	The phrasal verb means take someone to a place and leave them there.
5	revolution	The sentence describes mass protest, overthrow and a fundamental political change.
6	prestigious	The university is respected because of status or achievement.
7	interfere	The expected structure is interfere with decisions; the context is unwanted involvement.
8	buy	The parents are comparing models and budget to acquire ownership of a second-hand car.
9	honourable	Returning the wallet intact and refusing a reward provides evidence of integrity.
10	wearily	The blank modifies walked, and the surrounding clues describe physical tiredness.

A correct answer is useful. A correct answer with a reason is much more useful. The reason becomes a reusable rule that can survive a new question.

Why Vocabulary Questions Are Really Evidence Questions

A vocabulary-in-context question appears to ask, “Do you know this word?” In practice it asks several things at once. Do you understand the sentence? Can you identify the grammatical slot? Do you know which words naturally occur together? Can you distinguish near-synonyms? Can you notice whether the tone is approving, neutral or critical? Can you use real-world knowledge without letting it override the language on the page?

This is why a student may know every option on a worksheet and still choose the wrong answer. Definitions are necessary but incomplete. Vocabulary becomes usable only when the learner can place a word inside a network of constraints.

The best answer is not the word with the closest dictionary definition. It is the word that satisfies the whole sentence.

A Six-Layer Test for Every Vocabulary Blank

Grammar: What word class or structure can occupy the blank?
Core meaning: What idea must the word contribute?
Collocation: Which option naturally combines with the surrounding words?
Register: Is the context formal, neutral, conversational or strongly informal?
Tone: Does the word sound approving, disapproving, respectful, sarcastic or emotionally neutral?
World fit: Does the action or description make sense in the situation presented?

The six layers do not always carry equal weight. Sometimes grammar decides immediately. Sometimes several options are grammatically possible and collocation becomes decisive. Strong readers shift between the layers instead of relying on a single clue.

Question 1 — Confide: Meaning Plus Collocation

Sentence: “When my friend has a serious problem, he will often ______ in us rather than speak to his parents.”

Answer: confide. The sentence contains two clues. The first is semantic: a serious problem suggests private or sensitive information. The second is structural: English normally uses the pattern confide in someone. The word is not simply “talk”. It means to trust someone with information, feelings or worries that are not being shared openly.

Converse is a useful distractor because it also involves speaking. But converse in us is not a normal pattern, and ordinary conversation does not imply privacy or trust. The preposition reveals the answer even before the full meaning is considered.

Transfer rule

Learn verbs together with their normal grammatical partners: confide in, depend on, object to, interfere with, apologise for. A vocabulary notebook that stores only the base word throws away some of the most useful information.

Question 2 — Hire: Professional Service, Not Ownership

Sentence: “We may need to ______ a lawyer to advise my brother, although we must first consider the cost.”

Answer: hire. A lawyer provides a professional service. English commonly uses hire a lawyer, hire an accountant, hire a consultant and hire a contractor. The sentence also mentions cost, reinforcing the idea of paying for service.

Engage can also be used for professional services in some registers—especially formal business English—but the worksheet targets the more common answer hire. This is an important language lesson: natural language is not always a mathematical system with only one possible expression. A well-designed question should make one answer clearly best for the intended level and context.

Buy would be wrong because a person is not being acquired as property. This is an example of world knowledge supporting language knowledge.

Question 3 — Loser: Grammar Identifies the Required Word Class

Sentence: “Calling someone a ‘______’ simply because that person failed once is unfair; failure does not determine a person’s future.”

Answer: loser. The structure a ___ asks for a countable noun. More specifically, the sentence needs a noun that can label a person. The second half of the sentence then rejects that label as unfair.

This question demonstrates why grammar should often be checked before meaning. If the blank follows an article such as a or an, many verbs and adjectives can be eliminated immediately. Vocabulary solving becomes faster when the student asks, “What kind of word can live here?”

The sentence also contains a valuable distinction for writing: an outcome is not an identity. “He lost the match” reports an event; “he is a loser” turns that event into a judgement about the person.

Question 4 — Drop Off: Learn Phrasal Verbs as Units

Sentence: “I need to ______ my daughter at childcare before 7 a.m. because I have an early appointment.”

Answer: drop off. In this context, drop someone off means take the person to a destination and leave them there. Notice that the object can appear between the verb and particle: drop my daughter off.

The options drop in, drop out and drop back contain the same base verb but produce different meanings. This is precisely why phrasal verbs should be learned as lexical units. The small particle carries a large amount of meaning.

Phrasal verb	Common meaning	Example
drop off	Take someone or something to a destination; also decrease; also fall asleep informally	I’ll drop the parcel off after lunch.
drop in	Visit briefly and often without a long arrangement	We dropped in to see our grandparents.
drop out	Leave a course, competition or organised activity before completion	He dropped out of the race because of injury.
drop back	Move to a position further behind	She dropped back to run beside her friend.

Question 5 — Revolution, Revelation and Evolution

Sentence: “After years of mass protest, the ruling regime was overthrown and the political system was fundamentally changed in a ______.”

Answer: revolution. The clues are structural and historical: mass protest, an overthrown regime and fundamental political change. Revolution can describe a major overthrow in political or social organisation and can also be used more broadly for a dramatic transformation.

Word	Core meaning	Typical contexts
revolution	Major overthrow or dramatic transformation	politics, society, technology, industry
revelation	Something newly disclosed or realised	secret, discovery, surprising information
evolution	Gradual development; in biology, change in populations across generations	biology, design, language, systems

These words are dangerous because visual similarity encourages fast guessing. Good vocabulary learning creates contrast. Put easily confused words side by side, state the difference, then write sentences that force the difference to matter.

Question 6 — Prestigious: Status Is Not the Same as Quality

Sentence: “She received a scholarship to study at a highly ______ university.”

Answer: prestigious. The adjective describes something widely respected or admired because of status, reputation or recognised achievement. Universities, prizes, institutions, fellowships and positions can be prestigious.

The distinction from excellent is useful. A small school, local café or unknown research group can be excellent without being prestigious. Prestige concerns recognised status; excellence concerns quality. In precise writing, these concepts should not be treated as interchangeable.

Premium usually concerns higher price, superior category or paid service. A “premium university” would sound unnatural in this sentence. Collocation again helps decide.

Question 7 — Interfere: Near-Synonyms Differ in Tone and Pattern

Sentence: “My brother sometimes tries to ______ with decisions that do not involve him, even after I ask him to let me handle them.”

Answer: interfere. The structure interfere with is a strong clue. It means becoming involved in a process or situation in a way that obstructs, disrupts or is unwanted.

Meddle is close but often sounds more strongly disapproving and personal. It commonly appears as meddle in someone’s affairs or meddle with something. A learner who knows only that both words mean “get involved” has partial knowledge; the preposition, tone and typical context complete the picture.

Near-synonyms are one of the most valuable areas for vocabulary study because they teach precision. Compare look / stare / glance / peer, walk / stroll / trudge / creep, angry / irritated / furious / indignant. The differences create better reading and better writing at the same time.

Question 8 — Buy: The Situation Determines the Verb

Sentence: “My parents plan to ______ a second-hand car after comparing several models and checking their budget.”

Answer: buy. The context describes acquiring a car after evaluating options and affordability. That points to ownership.

A car can also be hired, rented, leased or borrowed, so the noun car does not decide the answer. The whole situation does. Strong readers resist keyword matching and instead build a mental model of what is happening.

This reading habit transfers directly to comprehension. The decisive clue is often not beside the blank. It may appear earlier or later in the sentence, or even in the previous sentence.

Question 9 — Honourable: Infer Character From Action

Sentence: “The ______ volunteer returned the wallet without taking any money and refused a reward.”

Answer: honourable. The sentence shows a person acting according to moral principles: returning lost property intact and declining personal gain. The trait must be inferred from behaviour.

This is an important bridge between vocabulary and literature. Character words should be anchored in evidence. Honourable, considerate, impulsive, arrogant, resilient, evasive and generous become useful only when the reader can point to the action or language that supports the judgement.

The same principle improves composition writing. Instead of telling the reader “Mira was honest”, show the moment when honesty costs Mira something and she chooses it anyway.

Question 10 — Wearily: Grammar and Context Agree

Sentence: “After the exhausting match, I walked home ______, carrying my sports bag with heavy steps.”

Answer: wearily. The blank modifies the verb walked, so an adverb is expected. The meaning clues—exhausting match, sports bag, heavy steps—all point to tiredness.

Sadly would describe emotion, not fatigue. A person can be tired without being sad and sad without being tired. This distinction matters because many vocabulary mistakes come from treating words as generally negative or positive rather than understanding the specific state they describe.

The Distractors Are Part of the Lesson

A multiple-choice question contains more than one learning opportunity. The correct answer teaches what works; the distractors teach the boundaries. After marking the worksheet, take one wrong option from each question and ask what would need to change for that option to become correct.

For example, revelation would fit a sentence about a surprising fact becoming known. Sadly would fit if the surrounding evidence described disappointment rather than physical fatigue. Converse would fit if the sentence simply described people talking. This exercise turns error correction into controlled contrast.

Vocabulary Knowledge Has Depth

Layer	A shallow learner can…	A deep learner can…
Meaning	Give a rough definition.	Distinguish the word from close alternatives.
Grammar	Recognise the word.	Use the correct word class and grammatical pattern.
Collocation	Understand the sentence.	Combine the word naturally with common partners.
Register	Know what it means.	Judge whether it fits formal, neutral or informal language.
Tone	Recognise positive or negative meaning.	Notice approval, disapproval, intensity and stance.
Production	Choose it in a worksheet.	Use it accurately in a new sentence without prompts.
Transfer	Remember the example.	Recognise the word in a different topic, genre or examination task.

This depth is why vocabulary is better understood as a network than a list. A word sits beside related meanings, opposites, grammatical patterns, collocations, contexts and examples.

How to Build a Vocabulary Notebook That Actually Helps

Traditional vocabulary notebooks often have two columns: word and meaning. Add more structure. For each important word, record the word family, a common collocation, one contrast word and an original sentence. The notebook becomes slower to fill but much more valuable.

Field	Example: confide
Meaning	Share private information or feelings with someone trusted.
Pattern	confide in someone; confide something to someone
Word family	confide, confided, confiding; confidant/confidante; confidence is related but not identical in meaning
Near neighbour	converse — talk, without the privacy/trust meaning
Original sentence	Aisha finally confided in her sister after keeping the problem to herself for a week.

A Better Correction Protocol

Mark each answer certain, uncertain or guess before checking.
For every wrong answer, identify the missed evidence: grammar, meaning, collocation, register, tone or situation.
For every lucky guess, treat it as a learning gap even though the mark is correct.
Write one contrast sentence using the distractor correctly.
Create one new sentence using the target word in a different context.
Return after a delay and retrieve the word without looking at the page.

This protocol separates performance from learning. A score of 10/10 can hide weak knowledge if several answers were guesses. A score of 7/10 can produce strong learning if the three errors are diagnosed and repaired.

From Recognition to Retrieval

Recognition feels easy because the answer is present on the page. Retrieval is harder because the learner must produce the word from memory. After completing the worksheet, cover the options and try to supply the ten answers from definitions or sentence cues. Then reverse the task: given the word, explain its meaning and pattern without looking.

The difficulty is useful. Retrieval exposes what remains available after the prompt disappears. This is one reason vocabulary should be revisited over time instead of completed once and filed away.

From Retrieval to Transfer

Transfer is the final test. Can the learner use confide in a new dialogue? Can prestigious be distinguished from expensive? Can wearily be replaced by a precise verb such as trudged when a composition scene needs movement? Can the learner spot revelation in a comprehension passage without confusing it with revolution?

A word is becoming durable when it works across reading, writing, speaking and examination contexts.

Mini Practice Set A — Choose the Better Fit

After keeping the problem secret for several weeks, Ryan finally decided to confide / converse in his form teacher.
The museum received a prestigious / premium international design award.
The tired hikers wearily / sadly packed their equipment after reaching the shelter.
Please do not interfere / revolutionise with the controls while the machine is running.
The discovery of the hidden letters was a startling revelation / revolution for the family.

Answers: confide, prestigious, wearily, interfere, revelation. Do not stop at the answers. Explain the clue that rejects the alternative.

Mini Practice Set B — Make the Distractor Correct

Take each rejected word from Set A and write a sentence in which it becomes the best choice. This forces semantic boundaries to become visible.

converse: The researchers stayed after the lecture to converse about their work.
premium: The airline charges a premium price for the more spacious seat.
sadly: She sadly folded the letter after reading the final paragraph.
revolution: The uprising eventually led to a political revolution.
For interfere, create a sentence using the pattern interfere with; for meddle, create one using meddle in.

Mini Practice Set C — Word Class and Family

Change the word form while keeping the core idea. Word-family practice strengthens grammar as well as vocabulary.

Base idea	Noun	Verb	Adjective / adverb
honour	honour	honour	honourable / honourably
prestige	prestige	—	prestigious
weariness	weariness	weary	weary / wearily
revolution	revolution	revolutionise	revolutionary
revelation	revelation	reveal	revealing / revealed

Not every word has a neat form in every category. Do not invent forms merely to complete a table. Vocabulary learning includes knowing where the pattern stops.

How Vocabulary Supports Composition Writing

Composition vocabulary should be functional. Precise verbs compress description; precise character words support inference; collocations make sentences sound natural; register helps dialogue sound believable. The goal is not to decorate every line.

Compare “He walked very slowly because he was tired” with “He trudged home.” The second sentence is shorter because the verb already carries effort and fatigue. This is lexical efficiency. The walking action-word library develops this idea through movement verbs.

How Vocabulary Supports Comprehension

Comprehension often depends on recognising paraphrase. A passage may say a character “confided in her sister”; a question may describe this as “sharing a private concern with someone she trusted”. A learner who stores words as isolated definitions may miss the relationship. A learner who stores meaning networks can move between wording and idea.

This is why synonyms, antonyms and related expressions are not merely vocabulary exercises. They help readers recognise the same concept when language changes.

How to Use This Answer Page With the Original Worksheet

Open the worksheet and complete all ten blanks without this page.
Mark certainty beside each item: C for certain, U for uncertain, G for guess.
Check the answer table above.
Read only the explanation for items that were wrong, uncertain or guessed.
Write a one-line rule for each repaired item.
Return two or three days later and complete the questions again without the options.
Use three target words in an original paragraph or dialogue.

The final step matters. A worksheet can show recognition; original writing shows whether the vocabulary has become available for production.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this an official PSLE English paper?

No. It is an eduKate practice worksheet and worked answer resource. It should be used for vocabulary learning and diagnostic practice rather than treated as an official examination paper.

Should Primary 6 students memorise long vocabulary lists?

Lists can organise material, but memorisation alone produces shallow knowledge. Learn fewer words more deeply: meaning, word family, collocation, contrast, tone and original use.

What if two options seem possible?

Check the whole sentence and compare grammar, collocation and intended meaning. Natural language can sometimes permit more than one expression, so a good exercise should provide enough context for one answer to be clearly best. If it does not, improve the question rather than pretending ambiguity does not exist.

Are synonyms interchangeable?

Rarely. Near-synonyms may differ in intensity, register, grammatical pattern, collocation or attitude. The difference is often the lesson.

How should students learn difficult vocabulary for composition?

Group words by meaning, compare near-neighbours, read them in context, retrieve them after a delay and use them in original sentences. Avoid forcing rare words into a composition merely to appear advanced.

Library Routes

Primary 6 Vocabulary Practice Worksheet No. 01082017 — the matching exercise.
Singapore Vocabulary Guide — the national vocabulary reference route.
eduKate Vocabulary Learning System — from recognition to retrieval and transfer.
Vocabulary Article Directory — the complete vocabulary shelf.
Singapore Learning Library — the wider eduKateSingapore reference collection.

Library note: This page began in 2017 as a compact answer key. The title and URL remain unchanged. The 2026 library edition keeps the ten original corrected answers but expands them into a worked vocabulary-in-context chapter on evidence, collocation, grammar, near-synonyms, retrieval, transfer and independent language use.

Beyond Definitions: Morphology Helps, But It Does Not Decide Everything

Prefixes, roots and suffixes can help a learner estimate meaning and word class. -ly often signals an adverb, -tion often forms nouns, and -ous often forms adjectives. This can make an unfamiliar word less opaque. But morphology is evidence, not permission to guess mechanically. The learner still has to check the sentence.

Signal	Useful inference	Caution
-ly	Often an adverb describing manner.	Some words ending in -ly are adjectives, such as friendly.
-tion / -sion	Often a noun naming a process, state or result.	Meaning still depends on the root and context.
-ous / -ful	Often adjective-forming.	Near-synonyms may still differ greatly in tone.
re-	Often suggests again or back.	Not every word beginning with re can be safely decomposed by a learner.
un-	Often marks negation or reversal.	The positive base may change meaning in actual usage.

Morphology is most powerful when it confirms other clues. In wearily, the -ly ending supports the grammatical need for an adverb, while the match, bag and heavy steps supply the meaning.

An Error Taxonomy for Vocabulary Practice

“Wrong vocabulary” is too broad to guide repair. Classify the error. Different errors need different practice.

Error type	What happened	Repair
Meaning error	The learner chose a word with the wrong core idea.	Compare definitions and create contrasting examples.
Grammar error	The learner chose the wrong word class or structure.	Mark the grammatical slot before considering options.
Collocation error	The word means roughly the right thing but does not combine naturally.	Learn the word with two or three common partners.
Register error	The word is too formal, informal or specialised for the context.	Compare examples from different audiences and situations.
Tone error	The learner missed approval, disapproval or intensity.	Place near-synonyms on a tone or intensity scale.
World-model error	The learner misunderstood what was happening in the sentence.	Paraphrase the situation before filling the blank.
Guessing error	The answer was chosen by familiarity rather than evidence.	Require one written reason before checking.

Once error types are visible, practice can become targeted. A student with repeated collocation errors does not necessarily need more definitions. A student who understands meanings but misses word classes needs grammar-linked vocabulary work.

A 20-Item Extension Laboratory

Use the words from this page and closely related vocabulary. Complete the sentence, then state the evidence that decided the answer. More than one sentence can sometimes be rewritten to allow another word; the task here is to find the best fit for the wording given.

She finally decided to ______ in her older sister because the problem had become too difficult to hide.
The family will ______ a technician to inspect the electrical fault.
The committee selected a highly ______ venue for the international ceremony.
Please do not ______ with the settings while the update is running.
After the overnight flight, he walked ______ towards the taxi queue.
The diary contained a surprising ______ about the inventor’s early life.
The uprising developed into a political ______ that changed the country’s institutions.
The design changed gradually through several stages of ______.
The ______ student returned the extra change immediately.
We need to ______ the equipment for the weekend rather than purchase it.
The teacher asked the two groups to ______ briefly before presenting their different ideas.
Calling a child a ______ after one poor result turns a temporary event into an identity judgement.
I will ______ the parcel at the office before heading home.
The charity chose to ______ an experienced accountant during the audit.
The athlete smiled but moved ______ after the exhausting final.
Her admission was a ______ because nobody had known about the agreement.
The museum is small but highly ______ among specialists in the field.
Do not ______ in an argument that the two friends are already resolving themselves.
The parents plan to ______ the bicycle after checking its condition and price.
The volunteer’s ______ behaviour earned the trust of everyone on the team.

A Seven-Day Vocabulary Review Cycle

Day 1: complete the worksheet and classify every error.
Day 2: write contrast pairs: confide/converse, revolution/revelation/evolution, interfere/meddle.
Day 3: retrieve all ten target words from short definitions without looking.
Day 4: write one original paragraph containing three target words naturally.
Day 5: return to collocations and grammatical patterns.
Day 6: complete the extension laboratory without the original option bank.
Day 7: teach the distinctions aloud to someone else or explain them in writing.

The schedule is deliberately spaced. Vocabulary becomes durable when the learner repeatedly reconstructs it after some forgetting has occurred.

What Mastery Looks Like

Mastery is not being able to point to confide in a list. It is being able to recognise it in reading, explain how it differs from converse, use confide in naturally, retrieve it when a composition needs private disclosure, and reject it when the context involves ordinary conversation. That is the standard the eduKateSingapore vocabulary library is built around: not word collection, but usable language.