General English
What the section tests
General English in KVS TGT checks controlled grammar, vocabulary in context, sentence correction, idioms, and comprehension-not literary criticism. Expect error spotting, fill-in-the-blank, synonyms/antonyms, one-word substitutions, active-passive, direct-indirect, and short passages.
Core rules
- Subject–verb agreement: the verb agrees with the grammatical subject, not the nearest noun. In “Neither the teacher nor the students ___”, the verb agrees with “students” → were.
- Tense consistency: a past-tense main clause normally keeps past tense in reported clauses unless a universal truth is stated.
- Passive voice: object becomes subject; use past participle with the correct form of be. “They completed the work” → “The work was completed.”
- Reported speech: change pronouns by speaker/listener relationship; shift tense one step back; adjust time and place words.
- Vocabulary: use context clues (contrast, cause-effect, definition) before guessing.
Worked example
“One of the boys ___ absent yesterday.” Options: was/were. Reasoning: The subject is “One”, not “boys”; “of the boys” is a prepositional phrase. “One” is singular, and “yesterday” needs past tense → was. Choosing “were” because “boys” is nearby is the classic proximity error.
Traps
Collective nouns can take singular or plural depending on unity; “each/every/either/neither” is singular; “none” may be singular or plural by sense. In comprehension, inferential questions punish answers copied verbatim. Idiom questions test fixed meaning, not literal words. Double negatives and dangling modifiers are frequent distractors.