English Language
Grammar areas tested
- Tenses and their sequence; present perfect versus simple past.
- Subject–verb agreement, including 'one of + plural noun' taking a singular verb.
- Articles, prepositions, conjunctions and degrees of comparison.
- Active and passive voice; direct and indirect speech.
- Error spotting, sentence improvement, fill in the blanks and cloze passages.
Vocabulary
- Synonyms and antonyms; one-word substitutions, such as 'a person who speaks many languages' - polyglot.
- Idioms used figuratively: 'to let the cat out of the bag' means to reveal a secret.
- Commonly confused pairs: affect/effect, principal/principle, stationary/stationery.
Worked example
'One of the boys ___ absent yesterday.' The real subject is 'one', not 'boys', so the verb must be singular; 'yesterday' requires the past tense. Answer: 'was'.
Reading comprehension
Read the questions first, then the passage. Every answer must be supported by the text rather than outside knowledge. For inference questions, choose the option the passage logically implies, not the one that merely sounds true.
Traps that cost marks
- 'Each', 'every', 'either' and 'neither' take singular verbs.
- Use 'since' with a point of time and 'for' with a duration.
- Avoid double comparatives such as 'more better'.
- When changing voice, keep the tense of the original sentence.
- Watch countable and uncountable nouns: many books, much water, fewer books, less water.