← HCS syllabus
HCS (Haryana)Stage 2: Main Written Examination
General Grammar and Composition
What the official syllabus says
Main Written Examination, Paper I: English and English Essay:
- (v) General Grammar/Composition.
Topics in detail
Parts of speech and sentence
- Nouns (countable and uncountable), pronouns and their agreement
- Adjectives and adverbs; degrees of comparison
- Articles: a, an, the, and their omission
- Prepositions and conjunctions
- Kinds of sentences; subject and predicate; phrases and clauses
Verbs
- Tenses and their correct use; sequence of tenses
- Subject-verb agreement, including collective nouns and "either… or", "neither… nor"
- Modals: can, could, may, might, must, should, would
- Infinitives, gerunds and participles
- Conditional sentences
Transformation of sentences
- Active and passive voice
- Direct and indirect (reported) speech
- Simple, compound and complex sentences and their interchange
- Affirmative and negative; assertive and interrogative forms
- Combining sentences and splitting long sentences
Correction
- Spotting and correcting errors in sentences
- Sentence improvement: replacing a wrong or awkward part
- Punctuation and capital letters
- Arranging jumbled words or sentences in a meaningful order
Composition
- Writing a clear paragraph on a given topic
- Coherence: topic sentence, supporting sentences, linking words
- Formal letters, applications and short reports, in their usual formats
Reported speech: the usual changes
| Direct speech | Reported speech (past reporting verb) |
|---|---|
| Simple present (is, writes) | Simple past (was, wrote) |
| Present continuous (is writing) | Past continuous (was writing) |
| Present perfect (has written) | Past perfect (had written) |
| Simple past (wrote) | Past perfect (had written) |
| will / can / may | would / could / might |
| now / today / here | then / that day / there |
The tense is not changed when the reporting verb is in the present or future tense, or when the reported words state a universal truth.
Overlaps
The Hindi paper has a matching part, composition (idioms, correction etc.): see Hindi and Hindi Essay.