General English: Functional Grammar and Usage
What this domain tests
General English checks practical control of grammar and usage rather than literary knowledge: subject-verb agreement, tense and aspect, articles, prepositions, active and passive voice, direct and indirect speech, degrees of comparison, error spotting, sentence improvement, fill-in-the-blanks, synonyms and antonyms, idioms and phrases, one-word substitutions, spelling, and a short comprehension passage.
Rules that repeat every year
- 'One of the + plural noun' takes a singular verb: One of the boys was absent.
- 'Each', 'every', 'either', 'neither', 'everyone' and 'nobody' are singular and take singular verbs and pronouns.
- Use 'since' with a point of time and 'for' with a duration.
- 'News' and 'mathematics' are singular; 'furniture' and 'information' are uncountable and take no plural -s.
- Comparatives pair with 'than'; superlatives take 'the'.
- In reported speech, shift tense back one step and adjust time and place words.
Worked example
Spot the error: 'The quality of the mangoes were not good.' The subject is 'quality', which is singular. The phrase 'of the mangoes' is a prepositional phrase and cannot change the number of the subject. Correct sentence: 'The quality of the mangoes was not good.'
Traps that cost marks
Being misled by a noun sitting next to the verb instead of finding the real subject; mixing present perfect with a past time marker such as 'yesterday'; choosing a synonym that fits the dictionary but not the sentence's register; and answering comprehension questions from general knowledge rather than from the passage.