English Language
English Language
The English section checks functional grammar and comprehension rather than literary knowledge. Expect reading comprehension (often banking/financial passages), error detection, sentence correction, fill in the blanks (single and double), cloze test, para jumbles, synonym/antonym and phrase replacement. The scoring skill is identifying the subject, verb and object of a clause before choosing an option.
Rules that decide options
- Subject-verb agreement: "One of the + plural noun" takes a singular verb - "One of the officers has submitted the report." "Each", "every", "either" and "neither" are singular.
- In "neither ... nor" and "either ... or", the verb agrees with the nearer subject: "Neither the manager nor the clerks were present."
- Use "since" with a point of time and "for" with a duration: since 2019, for five years.
- "Comprise" means "include"; write "comprises five zones", not "comprises of five zones".
- In para jumbles, find the opening sentence first - it usually has no pronoun or definite article referring backwards.
Worked example
Sentence: "The bank has decided to close down one of its branch which have been making losses."
Errors: "one of its branch" must be "one of its branches" because "one of" is followed by a plural noun; "which have been" must be "which has been" because the relative pronoun refers to the singular "one". Correct sentence: "The bank has decided to close down one of its branches which has been making losses."
Traps
- Choosing an option because it "sounds better" without locating the grammatical subject.
- Confusing "affect" (verb) with "effect" (noun), "advice" (noun) with "advise" (verb), "principal" (main/head) with "principle" (rule).
- In cloze tests, ignoring the sentence after the blank, which often contains the contrast word (but, although) that fixes the answer.