English / Hindi Language
The language section (attempted in English or Hindi) carries 40 questions: reading comprehension, cloze test, error detection, sentence improvement, para jumbles and vocabulary. Hindi candidates face equivalent items such as गद्यांश, वाक्य शुद्धि, मुहावरे and रिक्त स्थान. The paper rewards textual evidence, not general knowledge.
Core rules
- Reading comprehension: every answer must be traceable to a line in the passage. Inference questions need support; tone questions need adjectives or verbs that reveal attitude.
- Error detection: check subject-verb agreement, tense sequence, article use, preposition collocation, parallelism and modifier placement, in that order.
- Cloze: read the sentence before and after the blank; collocation often decides the answer.
- Para jumbles: find the opener (no pronoun or backward reference), then mandatory pairs, then chronology.
- Vocabulary: learn the word in context; a familiar word may carry an unusual meaning.
Worked example
"The committee have submitted its report to the board." The collective noun "committee" acts as one unit here, so it takes a singular verb: "has submitted". The possessive "its" already signals singular. Correct sentence: "The committee has submitted its report to the board."
Traps
Choosing an option that is true in general but absent from the passage; missing "one of the + plural noun + singular verb"; starting a para jumble with a pronoun; confusing "since" (point in time) with "for" (duration); in Hindi, ignoring लिंग and वचन agreement in वाक्य शुद्धि.
Mark the evidence line before selecting an RC option.