English Language Proficiency
What the domain tests
English Language Proficiency tests control of grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and formal written communication for civil-service and road-sector documents. Expect sentence correction, cloze, main-idea, inference, and short official-writing items.
Core rules and concepts
- Subject-verb agreement: find the true subject and ignore parenthetical phrases. 'The engineer, together with the technicians, has completed the report.'
- Keep tense consistent; use parallel structure in lists: 'plan, design, and construct,' not 'plan, designing, and construction.'
- Use pronoun case correctly: 'between you and me'; use a reflexive pronoun only when the subject and object are the same.
- Attach modifiers to the word they describe; a dangling modifier misleads the reader.
- In reading, separate main idea, supporting detail, inference, and tone; do not import outside facts.
- Formal writing should be concise, neutral, and precise; avoid slang and rhetorical questions.
Worked example. 'Neither the supervisor nor the technicians ___ ready.' The verb agrees with the nearest subject, 'technicians,' so the answer is 'are.' Reasoning: 'neither...nor' takes the number of the closer noun; the plural wins here.
Traps that cost marks
Choosing 'has' because 'supervisor' appears first; using a reflexive pronoun without a matching subject; overreading an inference as a stated fact; and treating a true statement as the main idea when it is only a detail.