English Language and Comprehension
What is tested
Error spotting, sentence improvement, fill in the blanks (single and double), cloze passages, synonyms and antonyms, idioms and phrases, one-word substitutions, para jumbles and reading comprehension. Grammar carries most marks and is the fastest to consolidate, because the same dozen rules recur across papers.
Rules that recur
- Subject–verb agreement: 'one of the + plural noun' takes a singular verb; 'the number of' is singular while 'a number of' is plural; 'neither … nor' agrees with the nearer subject.
- Parallelism: items joined by and/or must share the same grammatical form.
- Dangling modifiers: an opening participle must describe the subject of the main clause.
- Fixed prepositions: 'comprise' takes no 'of'; 'discuss' takes no 'about'; 'prefer X to Y', not 'than'.
- Para jumbles: the opening sentence has no unresolved pronoun and no 'this/hence'; then follow pronoun and connector links.
Worked example
'The number of applicants have increased sharply this year.' The subject is 'the number', which is singular; 'of applicants' is a prepositional phrase and cannot govern the verb. So 'have' → 'has'. Compare 'A number of applicants have applied', where 'a number of' means 'many' and takes a plural verb. The article is what decides the number.
Traps that cost marks
- 'Less' with countable nouns where 'fewer' is required.
- 'Since' with a point in time, 'for' with a duration.
- Affect (verb) versus effect (noun); advise (verb) versus advice (noun).
- Redundancies: 'return back', 'discuss about', 'comprises of', 'more wiser'.
- In comprehension, choosing an option that is true in the world but not stated in the passage.
- Answering vocabulary from memory of a similar-looking word rather than its actual root.