General English
What the English section actually asks
ESIC Stenographer's General English paper tests correctness and everyday usage, not literary criticism. Recurring item types are error spotting, sentence improvement, fill in the blanks (single and double), synonyms and antonyms, idioms and phrases, one-word substitution, spelling correction, and a short reading-comprehension passage.
Rules that repeat every year
- Subject-verb agreement: 'one of + plural noun' takes a singular verb; each, every, either and neither are singular; a collective noun is singular unless the group is divided.
- Prepositions and articles: learn fixed pairs - comply with, conducive to, deprived of, insist on; use 'a' before consonant sounds and 'an' before vowel sounds, including 'an hour' and 'a university'.
- Tense sequence: in reported speech the verb shifts back one step when the reporting verb is in the past.
- Parallelism: items joined by and, or, not only … but also must share the same grammatical form.
Worked example
One of the clerks ___ submitted the monthly return. Options: have / has. The subject is 'One', not 'clerks'; 'of the clerks' is only a prepositional modifier. Singular subject, so has.
Traps that cost marks
- 'Hardly/Scarcely … when' and 'No sooner … than' - never pair hardly with 'than'.
- Double negatives such as 'didn't do nothing'.
- 'Since' with a point of time, 'for' with a duration.
- In comprehension, answer strictly from the passage; outside knowledge pulls you to the wrong option.
- Confusing affect (verb) with effect (noun).
Read the whole sentence before choosing - most errors become visible once you locate the subject and its verb.