English Language and Comprehension
English Language and Comprehension tests grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure and reading accuracy. In a technical organisation, unclear written instructions can cause wrong isolation, wrong material or wrong measurement, so the paper emphasises precise meaning rather than literary style.
Core rules and concepts
- Subject-verb agreement: a singular subject takes a singular verb even if a phrase intervenes; “The list of items was…”.
- Tenses: use present perfect for past action with present relevance; past perfect for the earlier of two past actions.
- Articles: “a” before consonant sounds, “an” before vowel sounds, “the” for specific nouns.
- Prepositions: “since” with a point in time, “for” with a duration; “comprise” takes no “of”.
- Modifiers: place a participle next to the noun it modifies; avoid dangling modifiers.
- Parallelism: items in a list must share grammatical form.
- Comprehension: locate the claim, scope and tone; do not import outside facts.
Worked example
“The list of spare parts were checked before dispatch.” The subject is “list”, singular; “of spare parts” is a prepositional phrase and does not change agreement. Correct: “The list of spare parts was checked before dispatch.” The reasoning is to strip the modifier and test the head noun with the verb.
Traps
Collective nouns can take singular or plural depending on whether the group acts as one unit; “affect” is usually a verb and “effect” a noun; “fewer” is for countable nouns and “less” for uncountable; and in comprehension, an option that is true in general but not stated in the passage is wrong.