Grammar and Vocabulary
What the section tests
Fill-in-the-blank and 'do as directed' items on tense and aspect, subject–verb agreement, articles and prepositions, active–passive voice, direct–indirect narration, sentence transformation, plus vocabulary: synonyms, antonyms, one-word substitution, idioms and spelling.
Rules that decide most marks
- Agreement: the verb follows the subject, not the nearest noun - 'One of the boys is here'. A collective noun acting as a unit takes a singular verb.
- Narration: a past reporting verb forces backshift (present → past, will → would, can → could); pronouns shift to the third person; 'said to' becomes 'told'; time words shift (now → then, tomorrow → the next day, yesterday → the previous day).
- Passive: keep the original tense, move the object to subject position, and use 'by' only when the agent matters.
- Transformation: 'too … to' ↔ 'so … that … not'; 'unless' ↔ 'if … not'; a participle phrase can replace a clause sharing the same subject.
- Vocabulary: give a single word where a single word is demanded.
Worked example
'He said, "I am going to Lucknow tomorrow."' Reasoning: 'said' is past, so present continuous shifts to past continuous; 'I' becomes 'he'; 'tomorrow' becomes 'the next day'; inverted commas and the comma go. Result: 'He said that he was going to Lucknow the next day.' Do not retain 'tomorrow', and do not swing back to 'is going'.
Traps
- Present tense after a past reporting verb.
- 'Discuss about', 'married with', 'comprises of' - the same preposition errors every year.
- Choosing 'a' or 'an' by spelling rather than sound: a university, an hour.
- Backshifting a universal truth: 'He said that the sun rises in the east' stays present.
- Writing a phrase where one-word substitution is asked.