English Language: Grammar, Reading, and Writing
English Language: what the exam tests
The Tawjihi English paper checks reading comprehension, vocabulary in context, grammar accuracy, and controlled writing. It rewards candidates who identify the function of a sentence, not just its meaning.
Core rules
- Tenses: present simple for habits, present perfect for past actions with present relevance, past simple for finished past time.
- Conditionals: first (if + present, will + base), second (if + past, would + base), third (if + past perfect, would have + past participle).
- Passive voice: be + past participle; keep the tense of the active sentence.
- Reported speech: move tenses back one step when the reporting verb is past; adjust pronouns and time words.
- Relative clauses: who for people, which for things, where for places; use whom after prepositions.
- Linking words: however contrasts, therefore concludes, although concedes.
- Vocabulary: use context clues such as definition, contrast, and example to choose the closest meaning.
Worked example
“If I had revised earlier, I would have passed the test.” The if-clause uses had revised (past perfect), and the result uses would have passed (would + have + past participle). This is the third conditional: an unreal past situation with an imagined past result. Changing “had revised” to “revised” would produce an incorrect mixed form.
Traps that cost marks
Subject–verb agreement with collective nouns and indefinite pronouns; shifting tense inside reported speech; using “since” with a finished time; omitting articles before singular countable nouns; confusing “used to” (past habit) with “be used to” (accustomed to); and writing a composition without a clear topic sentence and linking words.