English Language
English Language
The English Language section of NIACL Assistant tests whether you can read a passage quickly and still notice fine grammatical detail. Expect reading comprehension, cloze test, error detection, phrase replacement, para jumbles and fillers, with vocabulary items (synonyms, antonyms, spelling) folded into them rather than asked in isolation.
Rules that repeat every year
- Subject-verb agreement: the verb follows the real subject, not the nearest noun - "One of the clerks is absent". Each, either, neither, everybody take singular verbs.
- Parallelism: items joined by and, or, not only…but also must share the same grammatical form.
- Prepositions: learn verb-preposition pairs as blocks - comply with, consist of, prone to, capable of, insist on.
- Para jumbles: fix the opening sentence first (usually a standalone definition with no pronoun like this or he), then chase pronouns and connectors to build the chain.
Worked example
Spot the error: "Neither the manager nor the assistants was present at the branch." Reasoning: with neither…nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject - assistants is plural - so it must be "were present". Taking the verb from the first noun is the standard trap.
Traps that cost marks
An option that sounds formal is not automatically correct. In error-detection sets, one question is deliberately error-free, so do not force a correction. In comprehension, reject options that are true in real life but not stated in the passage. In cloze tests, the missing word is often fixed by collocation ("pay attention to"), not by grammar alone; read the whole sentence before choosing.