The third section of the written portion of the Foreign Service Officer Test is the English Expression portion. This portion consists of sixty-five multiple choice questions during fifty minutes. There’s no penalty for incorrect answers so guess if you don’t know the answer. There are a number of selections, and you’ll be asked two types of questions about them. In the first type, you’ll be given a phrase or word in context. You’ll have to decide whether to (A) leave it the way it was in context, or choose substitution (B), (C), or (D). Solve these in three steps.
- Quickly eliminate grammatical errors.
- Eliminate answers that don’t quite sound right. Most native speakers of English don’t learn the rules, but speak correctly 90% of the time. Keep any eye out for tricks, but let your subconscious help you.
- If there are only two answers left, choose whichever one sounds best.
The other type of question doesn’t refer to anything in the selection, but will ask you about inserting, deleting, or re-ordering parts of the selection. These ones can be tricky, as you’re picking the “best answer” among several correct answers. These types of questions are always a bit subjective. Do your best and you should be fine. I took the FSOT and the GRE around the same time, and found that the “best” answer was easier to pick out on the FSOT (although it’s possible that I just think more like a diplomat than a grad-student).
Whenever anyone asks me what to do to study for the Foreign Service Exam I always tell them the same thing. Learn the minute and obscure rules of the English language. English will help you pass the English Expression and the Essay section of the exam, so 2/3 of the exam is based on that one skill. I read two books on economics before I took the exam and probably still missed all three economics questions on my test. You’re guaranteed 65 questions on English, so bone up!
This post is part of my unofficial Guide to the Foreign Service Exam.
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Haha! I knew that being a writing/journalism minor would come in handy some day!
That’s a good point on why to concentrate on the English Expression section. I’ve been studying economics and management a lot but not much of English expression. With a little over a week to go, I’ll concentrate on the English Expression portion. I really hope those flash cards I bought help me overall on the test!
I took the test week and found this part the easiest of the four. I enjoy editing generally but was worried, so spent a night or two in the library reading grammar books and memorizing “affect vs effect” and “who vs whom” but they didn’t even ask these. I don’t consider myself a grammarian or anything and while some questions were challenging and tricky, on the whole it didn’t seem to be testing advanced English.
are there any review books out there that anyone could recommend? I want a book that has practice tests than explain the answer. i have a foreign service test prep book by NLC and it doesnt give explanations to the answers. I def do not recommend that pos book to anyone.
I used the CliffsPrep book for the Foreign Service and the Arco Master the American Foreign Service Officer Exam. They explained the answers and I found them to be pretty true to the actual format of the test, which was very helpful.
thanks anonymous, I appreciate the advice and I just bought the CliffsPrep book from Amazon. I had another question for you. How was the grammar on the test? How did you study for it and how did you study for the essay? What topics do you think would be included this year on the test?
appreciate your advice.
to Anonymous or anyone else:
so i bought the CliffsTestPrep book and am going through each section. I am doing U.S. Society questions right now and they are so damn hard. I dont know if you can answer this but on your fso exam were there questions that asked who was the first african american woman to run for president of the US? or information regarding such specific things such as the “Pentagon Papers”
im taking notes on almost everything i get wrong but i feel like its impossible to study for this…. it’s kind of like the show Jeopardy.
is that really how the test is???
Another tip for the grammar section - if you can’t decide between 2 answers pick the one that is the least wordy.
I’m a French major and knowledge of your native language’s grammar rules is imperative!! Its hard being that you learn basic grammar in elementary school. Hegemon, would you suggest any great books or websites to help out with the grammar section?