General English
Grammar and usage
Revise parts of speech, subject-verb agreement, tenses, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, active and passive voice, direct and indirect speech, degrees of comparison, and common errors. Build vocabulary through synonyms, antonyms, one-word substitutes, idioms, and spelling. Comprehension requires the main idea, inference, and tone.
Traps
Use 'since' with a point of time and 'for' with duration. 'Few' is negative; 'a few' means some. 'Each' is singular. 'One of the' takes a plural noun but a singular verb. Watch misplaced modifiers and double negatives.
Rule of thumb
Find the finite verb and its subject first, then check tense and number. For prepositions, learn collocations rather than translating literally.
Worked example
'The list of items ___ on the table.' The subject is 'list', which is singular, so the answer is 'is', not 'are'. In 'She has been working here since 2018', 'since' marks the starting point of an action continuing into the present.
Voice and narration
For passive voice, identify the object; if there is no object, a passive is not possible. For narration, change pronouns, tense, and time words consistently.
Comprehension
Read the questions first, then locate the relevant lines. Choose the option best supported by the passage, not the one that merely sounds familiar.