English Language
Grammar the paper tests
Expect tenses and subject-verb agreement, articles, prepositions, degrees of comparison, active and passive voice, direct and indirect speech, question tags and conditionals. The vocabulary block covers synonyms, antonyms, one-word substitutes, idioms, spelling, and comprehension of a short unseen passage.
Rules to keep ready
- "One of + plural noun + singular verb": One of the boys is absent.
- Comparatives take "than", but senior, junior, superior, inferior and the verb prefer take "to".
- Passive voice: object becomes subject, then be + past participle, then by + agent.
- In reported speech with a past reporting verb, shift the tense one step back.
Worked example
Change to indirect speech: She said, "I am going to Hyderabad tomorrow." Answer: She said that she was going to Hyderabad the next day. Reasoning: the reporting verb "said" is past, so present continuous "am going" becomes past continuous "was going"; the pronoun "I" becomes "she" to match the speaker; "tomorrow" becomes "the next day"; a statement is joined with "that".
Traps that cost marks
- Articles follow sound, not spelling: "an hour" but "a university".
- Do not back-shift a tense when the reported words are a universal truth.
- In comprehension, answer strictly from the passage rather than from general knowledge.
- Missing the singular verb after "one of".