BCS Written English cheat sheet

Standard BCS essay structure: introduction (thesis in one sentence), 3-5 body paragraphs each with one controlling idea, and a conclusion that restates the thesis without new evidence.

A thesis statement must be arguable and specific; a statement of fact or a bare announcement of topic is not a thesis.

Each body paragraph follows claim-evidence-analysis order: topic sentence, supporting example or data, then explanation of how the evidence proves the claim.

Cohesion devices: lexical repetition of key nouns, pronoun reference, and transitions (however, therefore, moreover, in contrast) placed at sentence or clause boundaries.

Word-count discipline: allocate roughly 10 percent to introduction, 75 percent to body, 15 percent to conclusion; padding beyond the limit costs marks.

Formal register rules: avoid contractions, slang, first-person anecdote, and rhetorical questions in an academic composition.

Argument balance: a one-sided essay needs a concession paragraph; a discussion essay needs both sides plus a stated position in the conclusion.

Common mark deductions: off-topic drift, unsupported generalization, paragraph with two unrelated ideas, and conclusion that introduces fresh argument.

Subject-verb agreement: the verb agrees with the head noun, not with an intervening prepositional phrase (The list of items is long).

Collective nouns (committee, jury, team) take a singular verb when acting as a unit and a plural verb when members act individually.

Neither...nor and either...or take a verb agreeing with the nearer subject (Neither the boys nor the teacher was present).

Perfect tenses: present perfect for past action with present relevance; past perfect for the earlier of two past events.

Conditional pattern: If + past simple, would + base verb (second conditional); If + past perfect, would have + past participle (third conditional).

Reported speech backshifts tense one step unless the reporting verb is present or the statement is a universal truth.

Articles: 'a/an' with singular countable nouns introduced first; 'the' with unique or previously specified referents; zero article with plural generalizations.

Dangling modifier rule: the introductory participial phrase must describe the grammatical subject of the main clause.

A précis retains only the central argument; examples, illustrations, repetitions, and figurative language are removed.

Target length is conventionally one-third of the original passage; count words after drafting and trim to the limit.

Write the précis in the third person and in reported (indirect) speech; never quote the original wording.

Do not add opinion, interpretation, or facts absent from the passage; the précis must be a faithful compression.

A workable précis structure: one sentence stating the passage's main idea, then 2-4 sentences carrying the supporting logic in order.

Comprehension answers should be phrased in the candidate's own words; lifting whole sentences is penalized.

For 'meaning of the underlined word' items, supply a synonym that fits the sentence context, not the dictionary's first sense.

Give the précis a short title only if the question asks for one; an unrequested title may be treated as added material.

Translate sense for sense, not word for word; idiomatic equivalence outranks literal correspondence.

English passive voice often becomes Bengali active or impersonal construction; Bengali uses impersonal forms where English uses 'one' or 'people'.

Bengali verb goes at the end of the clause; English SVO order must be reordered to SOV in Bengali output.

English articles a/an/the usually have no overt Bengali equivalent; do not insert unnecessary demonstratives to compensate.

Bengali honorifics and pronouns (আপনি, তুমি, সে) encode politeness; choose the form matching the register of the source.

Proper nouns, technical terms, and numerals transfer unchanged unless an established Bengali form exists.

English idioms should be replaced by Bengali idioms of equivalent meaning, not translated literally.

After drafting, back-translate mentally to check that no meaning has been added, dropped, or inverted.

Prefix clues: un-, in-/im-/il-/ir-, dis-, non- negate; re- repeats; pre- and post- mark time; sub- and super- mark level.

Suffix clues for word class: -tion/-ment/-ness/-ity form nouns; -ous/-ive/-able/-al form adjectives; -ize/-ify/-ate form verbs; -ly forms adverbs.

Synonym items require matching connotation and register, not just rough similarity; a neutral word cannot replace a pejorative one.

Antonym items: watch for graded opposites (hot/cold) versus complementary pairs (alive/dead) versus relational pairs (buy/sell).

Root study pays off: Latin roots such as 'cred' (believe), 'dict' (say), 'spect' (look), 'port' (carry) recur across many exam words.

Homophone traps: affect/effect, principal/principle, stationary/stationery, complement/compliment, discreet/discrete.

Confusable pairs: 'economic' (of the economy) versus 'economical' (thrifty); 'historic' (momentous) versus 'historical' (of history).

In context-cloze items, test each option in the blank and reject any that breaks collocation or grammatical agreement.

An idiom's meaning is not derivable from its component words; learn the whole phrase with its fixed wording and article.

Verbal idioms are fixed for preposition and particle: 'look after', 'put up with', 'run out of'; changing the particle changes the meaning.

'To beat about the bush' means to avoid the main point; 'to beat the bush' is not the standard form.

'To take to task' means to reprimand; 'to bring to book' also means to call to account.

'A bolt from the blue' means a sudden shock; 'once in a blue moon' means very rarely.

'To make both ends meet' means to live within one's income; 'to burn the midnight oil' means to study or work late.

Phrasal verbs with 'turn': turn down (reject), turn up (arrive), turn out (prove to be), turn over (hand over).

In idiom questions, eliminate options that are literal paraphrases; the correct answer is usually figurative and non-obvious.

Comma splice rule: two independent clauses cannot be joined by a comma alone; use a semicolon, a full stop, or a comma plus coordinating conjunction.

Non-restrictive clauses and appositives take paired commas; restrictive clauses take none (The book that I bought is lost).

Semicolon joins closely related independent clauses and separates list items that themselves contain commas.

Colon follows a complete clause and introduces an explanation, list, or quotation; it must not separate a verb from its object.

Apostrophe: -'s for singular possessives, -s' for regular plural possessives, -'s for irregular plurals (children's); 'its' is possessive, 'it's' is 'it is'.

Quotation marks enclose the exact words; the period or comma goes inside the closing mark in standard British and American practice.

Dash marks an abrupt break or a parenthetical aside; a hyphen joins compound modifiers before a noun (a well-known author).

Question mark and exclamation mark are terminal and are not followed by a comma in the same sentence.

Doubling rule: a final consonant doubles before a suffix beginning with a vowel when the word is one syllable with one vowel and one final consonant (run -> running).

Silent-e rule: drop final -e before a vowel suffix (make -> making), keep it before a consonant suffix (hope -> hopeful).

Consonant plus -y becomes -i before a suffix (happy -> happiness), except before -ing (carry -> carrying).

'-ie' versus '-ei': use -ei after c (receive, ceiling); otherwise -ie (believe, achieve); exceptions include seize and weird.

British spellings in BCS scripts: -our (colour), -re (centre), -ise (organise), -ll- in travelled, defence and offence with -ce.

Commonly misspelled set: accommodate, occurrence, maintenance, separate, embarrassment, millennium, questionnaire.

Sentence-correction strategy: check subject-verb agreement, pronoun reference, tense consistency, parallelism, and modifier placement in that order.

Parallelism rule: items joined by and/or/but must share grammatical form (to read, to write, and to speak; not to read, writing, and speaking).