Botswana PSLE English cheat sheet

English: Grammar, Usage and Comprehension Rules

• Subject-verb agreement: a singular subject takes a singular verb (she walks); a plural subject takes a plural verb (they walk); compound subjects joined by 'and' take a plural verb unless they name one idea.

• Tense consistency: keep verbs in one time frame within a sentence or short paragraph; use past tense for finished narration and present tense for general truths and habitual actions.

• Articles: use 'a' before consonant sounds, 'an' before vowel sounds, and 'the' for a specific or already-mentioned noun; no article before plural or uncountable nouns used generally.

• Direct to reported speech: shift tense back one step, change pronouns to match the speaker, and change time/place words (now becomes then, here becomes there, tomorrow becomes the next day).

• Question formation: invert subject and auxiliary (She is coming becomes Is she coming?); with no auxiliary, use do/does/did plus the base verb (Did he go?).

• Punctuation: a full stop ends a statement, a question mark ends a question, a comma separates items in a list or a fronted phrase, and capital letters begin sentences and proper nouns.

• Comprehension method: read the passage, underline the question word (who, what, where, when, why, how), then locate the sentence that answers it and quote or paraphrase in a full sentence.

• Vocabulary in context: choose the meaning that fits the surrounding sentence, not the most familiar meaning; use the rest of the sentence to test whether a word choice keeps the sense.

• Inference rule: an inference must be supported by clues in the text; answers that add facts not stated or implied by the passage are incorrect even if they are true in real life.