English Language (Grammar, Comprehension, Vocabulary)
What is tested
The English section checks functional grammar rather than literary knowledge: articles, prepositions, tense consistency, subject-verb agreement, voice, narration, error spotting, cloze passages, synonyms and antonyms, one-word substitutions, idioms, and a short comprehension passage.
Core rules worth drilling
- Subject-verb agreement: the verb agrees with the head noun, not the nearest noun. Collective nouns take a singular verb when acting as a unit.
- Articles: a/an by sound (an hour, a university); the for unique or already-specified nouns.
- Tenses: a past-time marker in the sentence forces a past form; since/for with a point of past time needs present perfect or past perfect.
- Voice and narration: in reported speech, shift tense back one step and change pronouns and time words (today → that day).
- Prepositions: fixed collocations - comply with, consist of, deprived of, good at, married to.
Worked example
“The number of farmers adopting drip irrigation ___ increasing every year.” The subject is the number (singular), not farmers. So the answer is is. Note the contrast: “A number of farmers are adopting drip irrigation” - here a number of means many, and the verb is plural. This single pair accounts for a large share of agreement questions.
Marks-losing traps
- Reading only the words next to the blank; the real subject may be far away.
- Choosing an option that is grammatically correct but does not fit the passage's meaning in cloze tests.
- Confusing affect/effect, principal/principle, advice/advise, lose/loose.
- Over-literal translation from Odia word order into English in error-spotting items.