Another advanced-level World Cup-themed exercise. Ten sentences in English, eight of them containing mistakes. Can you spot the errors and correct them? Answers provided at the end.
Note that two of the ten sentences are completely correct and that no sentence contains more than one error.
1. France against Argentina, on Saturday, was a fantasticly exciting game.
2. The Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow is the biggest of the venues in this World Cup.
3. Portugal were knocked out of the competition on Saturday when they lost by Uruguay.
4. So far, this World Cup in Russia was one of the most exciting of the last 20 years.
5. The winners of the last two World Cups, Germany and Spain, have both been eliminate.
6. Russia, the host nation, reached the quarter-finals by winning Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw.
7. Japan were beating 2-0 against Belgium but ended up losing 3-2.
8. The Russia v Spain game took place in the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.
9. Brazil qualified for the quarter-finals by beating Mexico 2-0 with gols by Neymar and Firmino.
10. So far, only three players have been sent away (i.e. received a red card) in this World Cup.
Answers below...
So, how did you do?
1. France against Argentina, on Saturday, was a fantastically exciting game.
2. The Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow is the biggest of the venues in this World Cup. [NO MISTAKE]
3. Portugal were knocked out of the competition on Saturday when they lost to Uruguay.
4. So far, this World Cup in Russia has been one of the most exciting of the last 20 years.
5. The winners of the last two World Cups, Germany and Spain, have both been eliminated.
6. Russia, the host nation, reached the quarter-finals by beating Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw.
7. Japan were winning 2-0 against Belgium but ended up losing 3-2.
8. The Russia v Spain game took place in the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. [NO MISTAKE]
9. Brazil qualified for the quarter-finals by beating Mexico 2-0 with goals by Neymar and Firmino.
10. So far, only three players have been sent off (i.e. received a red card) in this World Cup.
Note the grammar rule in sentence number 4: because the World Cup is still taking place ('So far...'), the present perfect tense ('has been') is correct.
Also, as in the previous exercise (Spot the Mistakes 2), note that it is quite common in British English to treat football teams and other collective nouns as plurals, hence 'Portugal were...' and 'Japan were...'. But in American English you would be more likely to see 'Portugal was' and 'Uruguay was'.