Subject-verb agreement
The verb must agree with its real subject, which is often not the nearest noun.
Each, every, either, neither, everyone, one of take a singular verb: "Each of the students has submitted", "One of my friends lives in Pune".
Neither … nor / either … or: the verb agrees with the nearer subject: "Neither the manager nor the employees were present".
Some nouns look plural but are singular: news, mathematics, physics. "The news is good."
Phrases like "along with", "as well as" and "together with" don't change the subject: "The captain, along with the players, was honoured."
Tenses and conditionals
Type | Pattern | Example |
|---|---|---|
likely future | if + present, will + verb | If it rains, we will stay in. |
unreal present | if + past, would + verb | If I had time, I would help. |
unreal past | if + had + past participle, would have + past participle | If I had known, I would have come. |
Use since with a point in time and for with a period: "since 2019", "for five years".
Comparatives
Some adjectives take to, not "than": senior, junior, superior, inferior, prior, preferable. "She is senior to me."
Modifiers
An introductory phrase must describe the subject that follows it.
Wrong: "Walking down the road, the trees looked beautiful." (The trees weren't walking.)
Right: "Walking down the road, I found the trees beautiful."
Parallel structure
Items in a list or comparison must take the same grammatical form.
Wrong: "She likes swimming, to read and cycling."
Right: "She likes swimming, reading and cycling."
Articles
"A" and "an" depend on sound, not spelling: an honest man (silent h), a university (sounds like "you").
Shortcuts and tricks
The standard way is to read every option in full and judge which sounds right. Checking errors in a fixed order is faster and more reliable than relying on how a sentence sounds.
Check in this order
Subject and verb agreement: find the true subject and ignore phrases like "of the students".
Tense: look for time markers (since, by the time, yesterday).
Modifiers: an opening phrase describes the noun right after the comma.
Parallel structure: items in a list take the same form.
Articles and prepositions.
Strip the sentence down
Example: "The list of items are on the table."
Standard way: read the full sentence and decide whether it sounds right.
Shortcut: remove "of items": "The list are on the table" is clearly wrong, so it should be "is".
Words to memorise
Singular despite the -s: news, mathematics, physics, economics.
Words ending in -ior take "to": senior, junior, superior, inferior, prior.
Since + a point in time (since 2019); for + a length of time (for five years).
Exam tips
Find the subject and the verb first; most errors hide there.
Read each option in full; small changes in word order matter.
If two options seem correct, prefer the more concise one.