English Language - اللغة الإنجليزية
The English paper tests grammar and structure, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and guided writing. Grammar items are usually multiple-choice or transformation tasks, while the writing section is scored on task achievement, organisation, and accuracy rather than length alone.
Core rules
- Tense choice follows time markers: since/for with present perfect, yesterday with past simple, now with present continuous, by the time with past perfect.
- Passive voice: be + past participle, with the object promoted to subject. Present simple passive = am/is/are + past participle; past simple passive = was/were + past participle.
- Conditionals: first (if + present, will), second (if + past, would), third (if + past perfect, would have + past participle).
- Reported speech shifts tense back one step and adjusts pronouns and time words (today → that day, tomorrow → the following day).
- Relative clauses: who for people, which for things, where for places, whose for possession.
- Subject–verb agreement: each, every, everyone, and news take a singular verb.
Worked example
Complete: 'The new laboratory ______ (build) in 1998.' The subject (laboratory) performs no action and the date is in the past, so a past passive is required. Structure: was/were + past participle. Answer: was built. Reasoning check: 'built' alone would be active and would need an agent as subject - the laboratory cannot build anything.
Traps
- Using present perfect with a finished past time: 'I have visited Basra in 2019' is wrong.
- Confusing do/make and say/tell collocations.
- Missing the article with singular countable nouns: 'He is engineer' instead of 'He is an engineer'.
- Writing an off-topic composition - relevance is marked before grammar.
- Forgetting the -s on third-person singular verbs in the writing task.