English Language
What the section really tests
The English Language section rewards accuracy under time pressure rather than deep literary knowledge. Recurring question types are reading comprehension (often with a vocabulary sub-question), cloze test, error spotting, sentence improvement, para jumbles, single and double fillers, phrase replacement, and synonym–antonym or idiom items.
Core concepts: subject–verb agreement, tense and sequence of tenses, articles and prepositions, parallelism, pronoun reference, misplaced modifiers, connectors tested in fillers, and contextual vocabulary. For RC, practise locating the author's tone and the inference rather than only factual detail. For para jumbles, find the opening sentence (usually a standalone definition or a broad statement) and then hunt for pronoun and connector links such as 'this', 'therefore' and 'however'.
Traps: grammar options that merely 'sound' right; sentences where 'No error' is genuinely correct; extreme words in inference options ('always', 'never'); double fillers where only one blank fits all four options; and idioms tested in their figurative, not literal, sense.
Worked example - 'Neither of the two candidates ___ eligible.' The subject is 'neither', which is singular, so the verb is 'is', not 'are'. The same logic makes 'Each of the students has…' and 'One of the boys was…' correct. Rule of thumb: when 'of + plural noun' follows each, either, neither or one, the verb agrees with the first word, not the noun after 'of'.