Grammar: Tenses, Voice, Reported Speech, Clauses, Articles, Prepositions, Concord
Grammar is tested through fill-in items, transformation, editing, and sentence combining. The syllabus names tenses, voice, reported speech, clauses, articles, prepositions, and concord, so expect these to appear in context rather than as isolated labels.
Rules to apply
- Tense: use time markers; present perfect links past action to present; past perfect marks the earlier past action.
- Voice: the object becomes subject, the verb becomes past participle, and the agent is optional. Intransitive verbs such as 'happen' have no passive.
- Reported speech: backshift one tense after a past reporting verb; change pronouns to the reporter's viewpoint; shift time and place words; report questions with 'if/whether' or a wh-word and statement order.
- Clauses: use 'who' for people, 'which' for things, 'that' for defining clauses; avoid double conjunctions.
- Articles: 'a/an' for first mention, 'the' for shared or unique reference, zero article for general plurals.
- Prepositions: learn fixed collocations such as 'discuss' without 'about'.
- Concord: 'one of + plural noun' takes a singular verb; 'each' and 'every' are singular; collective nouns depend on unity.
Worked example
The teacher said, 'I am correcting the papers now.' Reported: The teacher said that she was correcting the papers then. Reasoning: past 'said' backshifts present continuous 'am correcting' to past continuous 'was correcting'; 'I' becomes 'she'; 'now' becomes 'then'; 'that' is optional. If the reporting verb is present, no backshift is needed: The teacher says that she is correcting the papers now.
Traps that cost marks
- Keeping 'now' after a past reporting verb.
- Writing 'The news are' or 'One of the boys are'.
- Forming a passive with an intransitive verb.
- Using question word order in reported questions.