Language II (English)
Language II (English) carries 30 marks. It tests reading comprehension, grammar accuracy and the pedagogy of teaching English as a second language to young learners in Class I–V.
Grammar that is actually tested
- Tense and aspect: simple, continuous, perfect; keep time markers consistent with the tense chosen.
- Subject–verb agreement, articles (a/an/the and zero article), prepositions of time and place, degrees of comparison.
- Active and passive voice, direct and indirect speech, question tags (positive statement takes a negative tag).
Pedagogy for the primary stage
- LSRW order: listening and speaking first, phonics for early decoding, then graded reading, then writing.
- Approaches you must be able to match to a situation: structural approach (pattern drills), communicative language teaching (meaningful interaction, information gap), bilingual method (judicious use of L1), TPR for very young learners.
- Correct selectively. Oral fluency work should not be interrupted; accuracy work comes later and separately.
Worked example
He said, 'I am going to Raipur tomorrow.' → He said that he was going to Raipur the next day. Reasoning: the reporting verb is past (said), so the present continuous backshifts to past continuous; the pronoun I becomes he because the speaker is the subject of the reporting clause; the time word tomorrow becomes the next day. Note the standard exception - universal truths keep the present: He said that the sun rises in the east.
Traps
- Writing 'He said that the sun rose in the east' - no backshift for universal truths or habitual facts.
- Gerund vs present participle: 'Swimming is good for you' (gerund, subject) vs 'The swimming boy waved' (participle).
- Teaching a poem by paraphrasing it into prose before the children have heard it read aloud.
- Penalising a regional pronunciation in oral work when the aim is communication, not accent.