TOEIC Link Part 5 — raise vs rise: The Object Test That Ends the Guessing

Fuel costs ____ sharply in the second quarter, forcing the company to revise its shipping rates. The options offer raised, rose, arisen, and risen, and most learners treat raise and rise as interchangeable ways to say "go up," pick whichever sounds familiar, and move on. That instinct fails here — the answer is rose — and it fails for a reason that has nothing to do with meaning. raise and rise are not synonyms competing for the same slot; they are two different verbs from two different grammatical families, and TOEIC writes Part 5 items specifically to test whether you know which family the sentence is calling for. This guide gives you the one test that decides every raise/rise blank.

The rule that actually works: does the verb take an object?

Forget "which word means to go up." Both do. The real distinction is grammatical structure:

• raise is transitive — it must have a direct object. Something (or someone) raises something else. The board raised salaries. The subject acts on an object.
• rise is intransitive — it takes no object. Something rises on its own. Salaries rose. There is nothing after the verb receiving the action.

The test is mechanical: look for an object immediately after the blank. If a noun is sitting there being acted upon (raised prices, raised the issue, raised concerns), you need raise. If the subject is going up by itself with no object (prices rose, the sun rises, tension is rising), you need rise. In the opening item, Fuel costs ____ sharply has no object after the blank — sharply is an adverb, not a noun — so only the intransitive rose fits. This is the same "read the structure, not the meaning" discipline that decides preposition-versus-conjunction items like during and while: the two words feel like synonyms, but the grammar is tracking something the meaning hides.

The trap: irregular forms hidden in past-tense blanks

The single most reliable raise/rise distractor exploits the fact that the two verbs conjugate completely differently, and the irregular forms look nothing alike:

raise is regular — raise / raised / raised. rise is irregular — rise / rose / risen. TOEIC loves the past-tense blank because a learner who knows the object test but forgets the conjugation still gets punished: they correctly reach for the intransitive verb, then write rised (which does not exist) or pick raised because it is the only past form they are sure of. When the sentence has no object and the tense is past, the answer is rose; when the tense is present perfect or passive-shaped with an auxiliary, the answer is risen. Memorize rose and risen as a pair and this whole trap disappears.

The passive-voice trap only raise can enter

Because raise is transitive, it can go passive; because rise is intransitive, it cannot. This gives TOEIC a clean, one-answer item:

• Concerns were ____ about the merger's impact on staffing. — The frame were ____ is passive, which requires a transitive verb, so the answer is raised. risen is impossible: an intransitive verb has no object to move into subject position, so it can never form a passive.
• Interest rates have ____ three times this year. — Here have ____ with no object is present perfect active, and there is no object, so the answer is risen. raised would demand an object that is not there.

The tell is the auxiliary: were / was ____ about (passive) points to raised; have / has ____ with nothing after it points to risen. Any item that puts a be-verb in front of the blank is quietly asking for the transitive member of the pair.

The fixed workplace collocations TOEIC reuses

Part 5 pulls raise and rise from a small, stable set of business phrases. Memorize which verb each takes and the guessing stops:

• raise (transitive) collocations — raise prices, raise salaries, raise a question, raise concerns, raise awareness, raise capital, raise the standard, raise an objection. Note that some of these have become near-idioms: raise a question is standard, rise a question is impossible.
• rise (intransitive) collocations — prices rise, costs rise, demand rises, temperatures rise, tension rises, the sun rises, rise to the challenge, rise through the ranks. The noun a raise (a pay increase) and a rise (British English for the same, or a general upward movement) are separate vocabulary items and rarely the tested word.

One phrase deserves a flag: a pay raise (American) uses the noun form of the transitive verb, while the verb in salaries rose uses the intransitive. Seeing raise as a noun in one collocation does not license it as a verb where an object is missing. This mirrors the fixed-pairing logic that governs make and do collocations — English locks certain nouns to one verb and rejects the other outright.

Worked examples

1. The finance team plans to ____ additional capital before the expansion begins. (A) rise (B) raise (C) rose (D) risen → capital is a direct object sitting right after the blank, so the verb must be transitive: (B) raise. The infinitive after to also rules out the past forms (C) and (D).

2. Employee morale has ____ steadily since the new flexible-hours policy took effect. (A) raised (B) rose (C) risen (D) raise → has ____ with no object is present perfect, and nothing is being acted upon, so the intransitive past participle is required: (C) risen. raised (A) would need an object; rose (B) cannot follow has.

3. Several objections were ____ during the shareholders' meeting and recorded in the minutes. (A) risen (B) rose (C) raised (D) rising → were ____ is passive, which only a transitive verb can form: (C) raised. risen (A) is intransitive and cannot go passive.

4. Global shipping costs ____ by nearly twelve percent last year, squeezing margins across the sector. (A) raised (B) rose (C) risen (D) were raised → No object follows the blank (by nearly twelve percent is a prepositional phrase), and the tense is simple past, so the intransitive past form fits: (B) rose. were raised (D) is grammatically possible only if an unnamed agent lifted the costs, but the sentence frames the costs as going up on their own, and no by-agent of that kind is present.

The three-second decision procedure

On any raise/rise blank, run this order:

1. Is there a noun object right after the blank? Yes → raise family. No → rise family.
2. Is there a be-verb in front of the blank (is/was/were ____)? Yes → passive → raise family (raised).
3. Fix the form: transitive → raise / raised / raised; intransitive → rise / rose / risen. Never write rised.

The meaning of the sentence — that something is going up — is the same either way, so it can never break the tie. Only the object test can. Anchor on the presence or absence of that object and every raise/rise item collapses to a one-answer decision. For the broader family of confusable Part 5 pairs where two similar-looking words split on grammar rather than meaning, see the among versus between selection guide, which runs the same "the count doesn't decide it, the structure does" logic on a different pair.