NECO English cheat sheet

NECO essay scripts are scored on COEMA - Content, Organisation, Expression and Mechanical Accuracy - so a well-argued essay still loses marks for spelling, punctuation and paragraphing faults.

Formal letter layout, in order: writer's address (top right), date, recipient's designation and address (left), salutation 'Dear Sir/Madam', a underlined title or heading, body paragraphs, 'Yours faithfully,' and the writer's full name.

Informal letter layout: writer's address and date at top right, 'Dear + first name,' body, 'Yours sincerely,' and the writer's first name only - no title, no recipient's address.

Argumentative essay: the position is stated in the introduction, one reason occupies each body paragraph with illustration, the opposing view is named and refuted, and the conclusion restates the position without new arguments.

Narrative essay is carried by past-tense verbs; present tense appears only inside direct speech or in a flashback frame, and dialogue is enclosed in quotation marks with a new paragraph per speaker.

Expository essay explains rather than argues: it defines the term, divides the topic into aspects, illustrates each with an example, and closes with a restatement of the explanation.

Speech or talk convention: open with vocatives in order of seniority ('The Chairman, the Principal, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen'), use the second person to address the audience, and close with a formal 'Thank you.'

Descriptive essay builds one dominant impression using the five senses and spatial order (left to right, near to far, top to bottom) rather than a random list of features.

A question worded 'which word in the passage means…' requires exactly one word or phrase copied from the passage; a synonym invented by the candidate earns no mark.

Pronoun-reference questions ('what does "they" refer to in line X') demand the antecedent noun phrase, and the answer must fit the sentence grammatically when substituted back.

Inference answers must be traceable to evidence in the passage; an answer that depends on general knowledge or personal opinion is marked wrong even if it is factually true.

Tone and attitude questions are answered with an adjective (humorous, sarcastic, sympathetic, critical, nostalgic) plus the words or incidents that create that tone.

Answers should be complete sentences unless the question explicitly asks for a word or phrase; a bare phrase is a common source of lost marks.

The number of marks attached to a question usually equals the number of distinct points required, so a three-mark question needs three separate ideas.

Figure-of-speech questions need both identification and effect: simile (like/as), metaphor (X is Y), personification, hyperbole, irony, rhetorical question.

Vocabulary replacement questions require the same part of speech and the same tense as the word replaced; a noun substituted for a verb is marked wrong.

Lifting - copying whole sentences from the passage - is penalised; full marks require the point to be re-expressed with changed vocabulary and sentence structure.

Each summary point must be a complete grammatical sentence with a subject and finite verb; sentences beginning with 'That', 'Because' or 'Which' are not accepted as points.

Points are drawn only from the section named in the question (whole passage, a numbered paragraph range, or one specified aspect); material from outside that section scores nothing.

Examples, illustrations, statistics, dialogue, repetition and minor detail are omitted from a summary; only the main ideas of each paragraph are retained.

The summary is written in the third person and in the tense of the passage, with no personal comment, evaluation or added information.

Where points are required 'in one sentence each', two ideas fused into one sentence count as one point and lose a mark.

Typical NECO summary tasks ask for a stated number of points (commonly five or six), and the mark allocation usually matches that number.

When a word limit is set, the count must be kept within the limit; exceeding it attracts a penalty even when the content is correct.

Concord: 'one of the boys who' takes a plural verb in the relative clause but a singular main verb; 'each', 'every', 'either' and 'neither' take singular verbs; 'the number of' is singular while 'a number of' is plural.

Question tags: a positive statement takes a negative tag and vice versa; 'Let's' takes 'shall we', imperatives take 'will you', and 'I am' takes 'aren't I'.

Reported speech backshift: present becomes past, past becomes past perfect, 'will' becomes 'would'; time and place words shift (now→then, today→that day, here→there, tomorrow→the next day), but universal truths keep the present tense.

Conditionals: Type 1 'if + present, will'; Type 2 'if + past, would'; Type 3 'if + had + past participle, would have + past participle'.

Fixed prepositions: congratulate on, accuse of, deprive of, insist on, depend on, capable of, comprise (no 'of'), prefer X to Y.

Senior, junior, superior, inferior and prefer take 'to', not 'than'; double comparatives ('more better', 'most fastest') are always wrong.

Modals: 'had better' and 'would rather' take the bare infinitive; 'would rather … than' pairs with the base form on both sides; 'ought' always takes 'to'.

Idioms are fixed in form and article: 'bury the hatchet' (make peace), 'a stitch in time saves nine', 'once in a blue moon', 'in the same boat' - altering the wording makes the option wrong.

Synonyms and antonyms are matched on part of speech and register: a verb stem needs a verb option, and a formal passage needs a formal equivalent.

English has 20 vowel phonemes - 12 monophthongs (/iː, ɪ, e, æ, ɑː, ɒ, ɔː, ʊ, uː, ʌ, ɜː, ə/) and 8 diphthongs (/eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ, aʊ, əʊ, ɪə, eə, ʊə/) - plus 24 consonant phonemes.

The '-ed' past ending is pronounced /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked, laughed), /d/ after voiced sounds (played, robbed) and /ɪd/ after /t/ or /d/ (wanted, needed).

The plural and third-person '-s' is /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats, laughs), /z/ after voiced sounds (dogs, plays) and /ɪz/ after sibilants (buses, watches).

Silent letters occur in comb, debt, doubt, honour, hour, island, knight, psychology, write, listen and subtle - the letter is written but never pronounced.

/θ/ (think, three, bath) is voiceless and dental; substituting /t/ gives 'tink' and 'tree', which is the single most frequently tested oral error.

Two-syllable words stress the first syllable as nouns and the second as verbs: REcord/reCORD, PREsent/preSENT, OBject/obJECT, INcrease/inCREASE.

Falling intonation marks statements, wh-questions and commands; rising intonation marks yes/no questions and non-final items in a list, with the final item falling.

Emphatic stress falls on the word that contrasts with an implied alternative: 'I said the BLUE pen' corrects a mistaken colour, 'I SAID the blue pen' corrects a claim of not having spoken.

Homophones tested in orals include see/sea, meat/meet, allowed/aloud, pain/pane, write/right, flour/flower, and their/homophones are distinguished only by context.