English Language and Comprehension
Coverage
Grammar and usage, error spotting, sentence improvement, fill in the blanks, synonyms and antonyms, one-word substitutions, idioms and phrases, sentence rearrangement (parajumbles), and a reading comprehension passage.
Rules that decide marks
- Subject–verb agreement: each, every, either and neither take a singular verb.
- Articles follow sound, not spelling: a university, a one-rupee coin, an hour, an MLA.
- Tenses: since and for pair with the present perfect; the earlier of two past actions takes “had”.
- Prepositions: different from; comprise takes no “of”; discuss takes no “about”.
- Conditionals: if + present → will; if + past → would; if + past perfect → would have.
Worked example
“Neither of the two candidates ___ (has/have) submitted the form.” “Neither” is singular, so the verb is “has”. If the subject were “both”, the verb would be “have”. The prepositional phrase “of the two candidates” does not change the number of the subject.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing a synonym by sound rather than meaning; “notorious” is negative while “famous” is positive.
- In parajumbles, hunting for the opening sentence by content instead of tracking pronouns and connectors such as this, therefore and however.
- Using “less” with countable nouns; it should be “fewer”.
- In error spotting, reading only the underlined part while the error sits in the rest of the sentence.
- Answering comprehension from prior knowledge instead of the passage.