Communication Skills (English)
What you must know
Focus on the parts of English that appear most often in everyday reading and writing tasks: main idea and supporting details, context clues (using nearby words to guess a word's meaning), inference (a reasonable conclusion from clues), fact vs. opinion, sequence and cause-effect, and basic grammar and usage (subject-verb agreement, pronoun reference, verb tense consistency, capitalization, punctuation). Also review functional texts: forms, labels, notices, and short letters.
Traps to watch
- A choice that is true in real life but not stated or supported by the passage is wrong. Answer only from what the text gives.
- Opinion words (best, should, beautiful, worst) signal opinion, not fact.
- In subject-verb agreement, find the real subject and ignore phrases in between: "The box of old books is heavy."
- Watch for "NOT" and "EXCEPT" in the question; these reverse the task.
- For pronoun questions, trace the pronoun back to the nearest sensible noun, not just the nearest noun.
Rule of thumb (worked example)
Passage: "Mila left home early, but the traffic was heavy. She still arrived before the bell rang." Question: What does the passage suggest about Mila?
- Step 1: What is stated? She left early; traffic was heavy; she arrived before the bell.
- Step 2: What can be inferred? She was on time despite the traffic.
- Step 3: Choose the option that matches only this. "She is careful about being on time" fits; "She lives far away" is not supported.
A reliable rule: the correct answer can be pointed to in the text. If you cannot underline the evidence, the choice is probably a distractor.