English
Scope
Parts of speech, subject–verb agreement, tenses, articles, prepositions, active/passive voice, direct/indirect speech, synonyms and antonyms, idioms, one-word substitutions, spelling, sentence completion, error spotting, and reading comprehension.
Where marks are lost
Most errors come from four places. Agreement: the verb matches the subject, not the nearest noun - with "neither…nor" and "either…or" the verb agrees with the closer subject. Tense consistency: a sentence anchored in the past stays in the past unless there is a clear reason to shift. Prepositions: learn them in chunks ("consist of", "comprise" with no "of", "averse to", "capable of"). Confusables: affect (verb) versus effect (noun); principal versus principle; advice versus advise; since (a point in time) versus for (a duration).
For comprehension, read the questions first, then the passage, and answer strictly from the text rather than from general knowledge.
Worked example
"Neither the officers nor the cadet ______ present at the parade." The verb agrees with the nearer subject, "cadet", which is singular, so the answer is was, not were.
Rule of thumb
In error-spotting questions, read the sentence slowly and check in this order: subject–verb agreement, tense, preposition, article, pronoun. Most errors hide in the first two.