I am finding it difficult to fill in this sentences in one of the AQA A-level past papers. Could you help? 1)他最喜欢篮球，我给他??? 了一双球鞋。Possible Answers: A 头 B 卖 C 买

No problem! Let's look at this sentence together. 1) 他最喜欢篮球，我给他??? 了一双球鞋。 So this sentence literally means "(Since) he really likes basketball, I ??? him a pair of trainers." Now in this space in English we want to put a word like "bought" which in Chinese is the verb mai3 and is written like this 买. But, if you didn't know that off the top of your head, don't worry - let's look at the Chinese. Possible Answers: A. 头 - this first character looks very similar to the verb mai3 买 but has no roof radical so actually means "head" and is pronounced tou3. So, we can't go for this one. B. 卖 - this character is very similar to our verb mai3 买 in looks, pronunciation and in meaning. This is mai4 with a harsh fourth tone and it means "to sell". We can differentiate 卖 from 买 as it has an extra two strokes (or a 十 sign) at the top of the character. I like to use this mneumonic: "sell something and get ten dollars" which helps me remember the 十 (the character for the number 10) goes on top of "sell". C. 买 - and here we go, our answer.