Kerala Plus Two English Literature (DHSE) common mistakes
Kerala Plus Two English Literature (DHSE) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Copies a full sentence from the unseen passage word for word as the answer, and when the question has two parts (e.g. 'state two reasons and explain which is stronger') answers only the first part.
Under time pressure candidates scan for the keyword, find the sentence containing it and transcribe it, because a sentence that 'looks like the passage' feels safe; the second command word is noticed only after writing has already started.
What to do instead
Before writing, circle every command word and number the parts of the question in the margin. Answer each part in one short paraphrase, then re-read the original sentence to check that your wording is different but the meaning is unchanged.
Names a figure of speech correctly and then stops - 'There is a simile in the second stanza' - without quoting the words compared or saying what the comparison reveals about tone, mood or theme.
Device-spotting is practised as a labelling exercise, so candidates memorise definitions but never rehearse the device-to-effect link; in the exam the label itself feels like a complete answer.
What to do instead
Write every device answer as three moves: name the device, quote the exact words, state the effect ('The simile comparing X to Y makes the speaker's regret feel physical rather than abstract'). Practise until the third move is automatic.
Answers an essay question on a prescribed prose piece with general opinion or moralising ('we must protect nature', 'hard work always pays') and never refers to a paragraph, phrase or line of argument from the text.
Reflective essays invite agreement, so personal response is substituted for analysis; candidates who read the piece once without annotating have nothing specific to point to when the clock is running.
What to do instead
Make two-column notes while reading (claim | where it appears). In the exam, require every body paragraph to contain at least one quoted or closely paraphrased phrase from the passage before you add your own comment.
Retells the short story or extract in chronological order ('first he went…, then she said…') and never addresses what the question actually asks about character change, narrative voice, setting or the effect of the ending.
Stories are easier to narrate than to analyse, and candidates read for what happens next rather than for how it is told, so plot is the only structure available to them when they write.
What to do instead
After a first reading, write two lines: who narrates, and what changes between the first and last paragraph. Then plan the answer around the question's focus and build in one quoted detail plus one comment on technique per paragraph.
Reads only the spoken lines of a scene, ignoring stage directions, entrances and exits, asides and soliloquies, and so treats a character's statement as the play's truth and misses the dramatic irony.
Stage directions are printed in brackets and italics and are visually easy to skip; candidates revise from plot summaries that drop staging, so they never practise reading a scene as something performed.
What to do instead
Read each prescribed scene twice - once for dialogue only, once reading only the stage directions - then annotate who is on stage, who is overheard, and what the audience knows that the character does not. Cite a stage direction in your answer.
Writes a notice without a boxed border or issuing authority, a letter without sender's address or correct date placement, or a report without a title and byline, and starts the body first.
Format is memorised as a template but treated as less important than content, and under exam haste the opening line of the body is the easiest thing to begin with, so the structural marks are lost before the candidate notices.
What to do instead
Spend thirty seconds on a fixed format checklist before writing a single sentence: notice (box, heading, date, name/designation), letter (address, date, salutation, subject, close), report (title, byline, opening paragraph answering what/when/where). Build the skeleton first, then fill it.
In a précis task, lifts whole sentences from the passage, keeps examples, statistics and quotations, and produces a summary closer to half the original length than to the required one-third.
Fear of losing content marks encourages copying, and candidates count words badly because they estimate rather than count, so the discipline of compression is never really applied.
What to do instead
Write one line per paragraph identifying its topic sentence, then draft from those lines only with the passage closed. Exclude examples, figures and dialogue, keep technical terms unchanged, and count the words in the final draft against the stated limit.
In voice transformation, changes the verb but shifts the tense or drops the agent ('Someone stole the bag' becoming 'The bag is stolen'); in reported speech, fails to backshift the verb and leaves time and place words unchanged.
Transformation rules are learned as isolated formulas and applied mechanically, without first identifying the main verb, its tense and whether an agent is actually present and worth naming.
What to do instead
Follow a fixed order: find the main verb and its tense, check whether the agent matters, apply the change, then read the result aloud to catch tense slips and unshifted words like 'now', 'here', 'tomorrow'.
Interprets idioms word by word ('pull someone's leg' as a physical act, 'once in a blue moon' as an astronomy reference) and fills word-formation blanks with the wrong derivative because the suffix chosen changes the word class.
Idioms are memorised as isolated items without a context sentence, and word-formation is done by feel rather than by checking what the gap grammatically requires.
What to do instead
Store every idiom with one full example sentence and its register. For word formation, decide before choosing an affix whether the gap needs a noun, verb, adjective or adverb, then test the derived word by reading the whole sentence.
Uses critical terms loosely - calls the subject of a poem its theme, labels any comparison a metaphor including those using 'like' or 'as', and uses 'irony' to mean any surprise ending.
Terminology is revised as a list of definitions rather than as a set of distinctions, and no one practises identifying terms inside real lines, so near-synonyms collapse into one another under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Keep a two-column glossary with a definition and one example line for each term, and practise a discrimination drill: compare metaphor with simile, theme with subject, irony with coincidence, and state the distinguishing feature in a single sentence.