English: Grammar, Usage and Comprehension
The English portion of the CSS MPT tests control of standard written English rather than literary history. Expect sentence-correction items, preposition and idiom blanks, synonym/antonym pairs, and one or two short passages followed by main-idea, detail and inference questions. Everything is answerable from the sentence or passage printed in front of you, so precision beats wide reading.
Core rules that recur
- Subject–verb agreement: the verb follows the true subject, not the nearest noun. "The number of applicants is rising" (singular head), but "a number of applicants are waiting" (plural sense).
- Parallelism: items in a list or after than/as must share grammatical form - "she prefers reading, swimming and cycling", not "reading, swimming and to cycle".
- Modifier placement: an opening participle modifies the subject of the main clause.
- Prepositions and idioms: "comply with", "averse to", "capable of", "deprived of", "consists of".
- Comprehension: the right answer must be supported by the text, not by your own knowledge of the subject.
Worked example
"Neither the chairman nor the members ___ (was/were) present." In a neither … nor construction the verb agrees with the nearer subject, so were is correct. Reverse the order - "Neither the members nor the chairman was" - and the singular becomes right. The reasoning, not the sound of the sentence, decides.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing an option that sounds formal but breaks agreement.
- Reading only the underlined part of a correction item; the real error often sits elsewhere in the sentence.
- Ignoring tone questions, where a moderate, neutral option is usually right and an extreme one wrong.
- Picking a comprehension option that is true in the world but absent from the passage.