English Language
What the section tests
English Language checks control of grammar, vocabulary and extended text. Expect error spotting, sentence improvement, fillers, cloze, para jumbles, reading comprehension and synonym/antonym items. The passages may be economy- or infrastructure-themed, but the answers depend on syntax and context, not outside knowledge.
Core rules
- Subject-verb agreement: 'the number of projects has increased'; 'a number of projects have increased'. 'One of the' takes a singular verb.
- Pronouns must agree in number and person; avoid ambiguous 'it/they'.
- Parallelism: items in a list must share grammatical form-'planning, financing and monitoring'.
- Modifiers should sit next to the word they modify; a dangling participle is an error.
- In para jumbles, use pronouns, connectors, chronology and repeated nouns to establish links.
- In RC, distinguish main idea from detail; infer only what the text supports.
Worked example
Sentence: 'The number of infrastructure projects have increased, but the pace of disbursement remain slow.' Two errors: 'have' agrees with 'number' (singular), so 'has'; 'remain' agrees with 'pace' (singular), so 'remains'. Corrected: 'The number of infrastructure projects has increased, but the pace of disbursement remains slow.'
Traps
Do not choose a synonym that ignores tone or collocation. In cloze, test the whole sentence, not the blank alone. In RC, extreme options ('always', 'never') are often wrong. In error spotting, a phrase can sound natural but violate concord; check the subject before the verb.