English Language and Usage
What to master
This section tests grammar (subject–verb agreement, tense, pronouns, prepositions), vocabulary (synonyms, antonyms, word choice), sentence structure, punctuation, and idiomatic expression. Precision matters more than complexity: short, correct sentences beat ornate, faulty ones.
Typical traps
- Subject–verb agreement across intervening phrases. "The list of items is long" - the verb agrees with list, not items.
- Collective nouns. "The committee has decided" (as one body) vs "the committee have disagreed" (as individuals); British usage allows both, so read the context.
- Misplaced modifiers. "Walking to the market, the rain started" wrongly attaches walking to rain.
- Preposition collocations. Comprise takes no of; composed of does. Different from, not different than, in formal usage.
- Confusable pairs. Affect (verb) vs effect (noun); principal vs principle; complement vs compliment.
Rule of thumb
For sentence-correction items, read the sentence aloud mentally and locate the verb first, then its subject. Most errors in this section are agreement or tense errors hiding behind long phrases.
Worked example
"Neither the manager nor the clerks was informed." With neither…nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject - clerks - so the correct form is were: "Neither the manager nor the clerks were informed."