English Language
What the English section tests
MSC Bank's English paper checks control of standard written English rather than literary knowledge. Expect error spotting, sentence improvement, fillers, cloze, reading comprehension, para jumbles and synonym/antonym items. The highest-yield area is grammar because the same eight or nine rules recur.
Core rules that recur
- Subject-verb agreement: ignore parenthetical phrases. 'The list of applicants is long', not 'are'.
- 'One of + plural noun + singular verb': 'One of the branches has...'
- Each, every, either, neither, anyone and everyone take singular verbs and singular pronouns.
- Articles: 'a' before consonant sounds, 'an' before vowel sounds; 'the' for specified or unique items.
- Prepositions with fixed collocations: 'comply with', 'consist of', 'depends on', 'prefer to'.
- Parallelism: items joined by and/or/but must share grammatical form.
- Modifiers must sit next to the word they describe.
Worked example
Sentence: 'Each of the branches have submitted their report.' Reasoning: the subject is 'Each', which is singular; the phrase 'of the branches' does not change the number. The verb must be 'has', and the possessive pronoun must agree: 'its'. Correct: 'Each of the branches has submitted its report.' If the sentence began 'All the branches', both 'have' and 'their' would be correct.
Traps that cost marks
Collective nouns such as committee, team and jury usually take a singular verb when acting as one unit. 'Since' needs a point in time; 'for' needs a duration. Do not choose an option only because it sounds formal. In comprehension, answer from the passage, not from general knowledge.