General English, Part A: Grammar and Usage

What the official syllabus says

Main Examination, Paper IV: General Hindi and General English

Unit II - General English (Total marks 70)

Part A - Grammar & Usage (20 Marks)

• Preposition
• The same word used as different part of speech
• Phrasal Verbs & Idioms (application)
• One Word Substitute (application)
• Words often Confused or Misused (application)

Topics in detail

Prepositions

• Time: at, on, in, since, for, by, during, till/until, within
• Place and position: at, in, on, above, over, under, below, between, among, beside, behind
• Direction and movement: to, towards, into, onto, across, through, along, up, down
• Agent and instrument: by and with
• Cause and purpose: for, from, of, because of, owing to, due to
• Fixed prepositions after verbs: consist of, depend on, insist on, abstain from, comply with, prevent from, refer to
• After adjectives: afraid of, aware of, capable of, fond of, good at, proud of, senior to, superior to
• After nouns: access to, approach to, confidence in, respect for, objection to
• Pairs often confused: in/into, on/upon, beside/besides, between/among, since/for, by/with
• Prepositions that are not needed: discuss (not discuss about), order (not order for), enter (not enter into) a room

The same word as different parts of speech

• The idea: a word's part of speech depends on its job in the sentence, not on the word itself
• Telling the job: a noun names, a verb states action or being, an adjective qualifies a noun, an adverb qualifies a verb, adjective or adverb, a preposition relates a noun to another word, a conjunction joins
• Words used as noun, verb and adjective: light, present, cool, clean, faint
• Words with even more uses: round (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition), fast (noun, verb, adjective, adverb), well (noun, adjective, adverb, interjection)
• Function words with several uses: since and before (preposition, conjunction, adverb), but (conjunction, preposition, adverb), that (pronoun, adjective, conjunction)
• Noun and verb pairs that differ in stress: record, present, object, conduct, permit
• Writing a correct sentence for each use, and naming the part of speech in it

Phrasal verbs and idioms (application)

• Phrasal verb: a verb with a particle (adverb or preposition) whose meaning differs from the verb alone
• Separable and inseparable phrasal verbs; transitive and intransitive ones
• Common phrasal verbs: bring about, bring up, call off, carry out, come across, do away with, give in, look into, make out, put off, put up with, set up, take after, turn down, wind up
• Idiom: a fixed expression whose meaning is not the sum of its words
• Common idioms: a bolt from the blue, at the eleventh hour, burn the midnight oil, a red-letter day, hold water, by and large, in the long run, leave no stone unturned, a white elephant, bell the cat, red tape, call a spade a spade
• 'Application' means using them correctly in a sentence of one's own, in the right tense and form

One-word substitutes (application)

• Persons: altruist, philanthropist, misanthrope, polyglot, novice, veteran, optimist, pessimist
• Forms of government: anarchy, autocracy, bureaucracy, democracy, oligarchy, plutocracy, theocracy
• Fields of study: anthropology, entomology, ornithology, numismatics, philately, seismology
• Killing of persons: homicide, regicide, fratricide, genocide
• Fears: claustrophobia, acrophobia, hydrophobia
• Law and administration: amnesty, embezzlement, perjury, quorum, ultimatum, ex officio
• Qualities and states: anonymous, contemporary, eligible, illegible, inevitable, infallible, omnipresent, posthumous, unanimous
• Using the substitute in a sentence in place of the longer phrase

Words often confused or misused (application)

• Look-alike pairs: accept/except, adapt/adopt, affect/effect, principal/principle, stationary/stationery, complement/compliment, council/counsel, eminent/imminent, loose/lose, persecute/prosecute, precede/proceed, credible/creditable
• Noun and verb pairs in British spelling: advice/advise, practice/practise, licence/license
• Related pairs with different senses: economic/economical, historic/historical, continual/continuous, ensure/insure, farther/further, fewer/less
• Verbs often misused: lay/lie, raise/rise
• Redundant expressions: return back, reply back, revert back, each and every, cousin brother
• Writing sentences that show the difference clearly

Overlaps

The Hindi counterparts (word and sentence correction, idioms and proverbs) are in General Hindi, भाग अ. Correct usage also matters in the Essay if it is written in English.