Exam Tips — Higher Extension Verbs

💡 Exam Tips — Higher Extension Verbs

• sé = I know (how to / that). This tiny word signals saber in the yo form. One written accent separates it from se (pronoun). Use sé tocar la guitarra or sé que tienes razón in your writing — examiners reward it as an AO2 complexity marker.
• SABER + que-clause; CONOCER + noun only. Writing conozco que... is a Higher-tier error — conocer cannot take a que-clause. Use saber for facts and skills; conocer for people and places.
• ponerse + adjective = instant Higher booster. Me pongo nervioso/a (I become nervous) demonstrates reflexive verb control and semantic precision that ser/estar cannot match. Use it at least once per relevant writing task.
• seguir carries two irregularities at once. The yo form is sigo — the e→i stem change operates first (segu→sigo), then g is already hard before -o so the spelling u drops. This is not intuitive: commit sigo to memory as a complete form.
• Yo-go pattern: salgo, traigo, pongo. All other forms of salir/traer/poner are regular. If you can remember the yo form, the rest is straightforward. These high-frequency verbs appear repeatedly in AQA listening and reading papers.