General English (Grammar, Vocabulary, Comprehension, Usage)
What the paper tests
The English section checks whether you can spot an error in a sentence, choose the right word, and read a short passage accurately. Question types: error spotting, sentence improvement, fill in the blanks, synonyms and antonyms, one-word substitution, idioms, active/passive, direct/indirect speech, and a comprehension passage.
Core rules
- Subject–verb agreement: a singular subject takes a singular verb. Phrases such as one of, each of, neither of take a singular verb. “One of the peons has not returned the file.”
- Words that take to: senior, junior, superior, inferior, prior, preferable, similar, married, according. “He is senior to me.”
- Legal-register number: summons is singular; summonses is plural. “The summons was served yesterday.”
- Tense sequence: keep the tense consistent; use past perfect for the earlier of two past actions.
- Confusables: affect/effect, advise/advice, practice/practise, its/it’s, principal/principle, stationary/stationery.
- Comprehension: answer from the passage only. Inference questions ask what follows logically, not what you know about the topic.
Worked example
“Hardly had the peon reached the gate ___ the defendant left.” The pair hardly … when is fixed, so the blank takes when, not than or then. Reasoning: correlative pairs are tested as memorised units - hardly/when, scarcely/when, no sooner/than, so/as.
Traps
Double negatives (“didn’t do nothing”), since used for a period instead of a point in time, less with countable nouns (use fewer), and answering comprehension from memory rather than from the printed text.