English Language: Subject, Evidence, and Link
English Language tests standard written English in a banking context: reading comprehension, grammar and error spotting, sentence correction and rearrangement, cloze/fill in the blanks, synonyms and antonyms, and phrase replacement. The safest method is to identify the grammatical subject and the context clue before choosing an option.
Core rules
- Subject-verb agreement: “each,” “every,” “either,” “neither,” and “one of” are singular in the main clause; with “neither…nor,” the verb agrees with the nearer subject.
- Parallelism: items joined by and, or, or but must share the same grammatical form.
- Modifiers: a participial phrase at the start modifies the subject of the main clause.
- Reading comprehension answers must be supported by the passage; eliminate options that are true in general but not stated.
- In fillers, use collocation and tone, not just dictionary meaning.
Worked example
“Each of the branches have submitted its report.” The subject is “Each,” which is singular; “of the branches” is a prepositional phrase. The verb should be “has,” and the possessive “its” is correct. Corrected: “Each of the branches has submitted its report.”
Traps that cost marks
Being misled by the noun nearest the verb; treating “data,” “staff,” or “police” as always singular or plural without context; choosing a grammatically correct option that changes the passage’s meaning; and in rearrangement questions, ignoring pronoun and connector links.