Tenses in English Grammar with Examples

Tense is a form of a verb which is used to indicate the time, and sometimes the continuation or completeness, of an action in relation to the time of speaking. The origin of the word Tense is the latin word Tempus, which means Time. In simple words we can say that the Tense is a method which is used to refer to time - past, present and future. Tense tells you when the action happens. 

Tips for Sentence Rearrangement / Reordering in English

Sentence Reordering / Rearrangement is one of the Important and easiest section of English Language. Now a days in almost all competitive exams they are asking questions from this area. With basic knowledge of English and little concentration you can easily get full marks in this section. In sentence Rearrangement / Reordering problems they will give you four or five sentences which lack of coherence, connection and development. There will be only one way of rearranging them to acquire coherence, connection and development. You should choose the correct arrangement from the given answers. Before going into details, lets have a look at some important tips.

Prepositions in English

Friends, in this post we shall see some important rules of Prepositions.

Rule 1 : Across

• Across - On teh opposite side of 
• My Cousin lives across the river.✔
• Across - From one side to another
• The boy swam across the river ✔
• Across - both sides
• He threw the luggage across his shoulders ✔
• Come Across - means meet accidentally / suddenly
• When I was going to market, I came across an old friend. ✔
• I suddenly came across him ☓
• I came across him. ✔

Conjunctions in English - Shortcut Rules

Friends, in this post we shall discuss some important Rules of Conjunctions.

Rule 1 : The co-relative conjunctions are used in pairs.

1. Not only - but also
2. Either - or
3. Neither - nor
4. Both - and
5. Though - yet
6. Whether - or

Adverbs in English - Shortcut Rules

Friends, in today's post we shall discuss about the rules on Adverbs along with some Adverb Examples. 

What are Adverbs?

An adverb is a word that tells us more about a verb. It "qualifies" or "modifies" a verb. 

Articles - Shortcut Rules

Friends, today we shall discuss some important rules of Articles.

Rule 1 : The indefinite article 'A'  should be used before the word 'Half' when it follows a whole number.

• I stayed in Madras for one and half years. ☓
• I stayed in Madras for one and a half years. ✔

• He spent one and half a half rupee. ☓
• He spent one and a half rupees. ✔

Adjectives - Shortcut Rules - Part 2

Friends, before reading this post read the part 1 of Rules on Adjectives Here

Shortcut Rule 5 :

• One, Two, Three etc. are caled Cardinal Numbers.
• First, Second, Third etc are called Ordinal Numbers.

Adjectives - Shortcut Rules - Part 1

Friends, in our English Grammar Shortcut rules series today we shall discuss the Rules of Adjectives. Before going into details lets start with the basic definition of Adjectives followed by some examples.

Basic Definition of Adjective : Simply we can say that Adjectives are describing words. Adjectives are words that describe or modify nouns.

Inappropriate Words / Misspelt English Words

Friends, today we shall discuss about one more important topic of English Section for Competitive Exams Misspelt / Inappropriate words. In this type of questions they will give you a sentence highlighting four words. Of those four words one may be either wrongly spelt or inappropriate in the context of the sentence.You just have to find out the words which is wrongly spelt / misspelt or inappropriate if any.

One Word Substitution in English - Excercise 1

Friends, One Word Substitute / Substitution is another important area in English Section. Now a days in almost all competitive exams they are asking questions from this area. In these type questions they will give you a sentence with four / five options below it. You just have to pick a suitable word which gives the exact meaning / idea as the given sentence (Ex : An account of somebody's life written by another person - Biography). Here are some practice exercises of One word substitutions. Hope these will help you in your preparation. Happy reading :)

Correction of Sentences in English

Friends, today we shall discuss one of the very important topics of SBI PO and other competitive exams' English Section Correction of Sentences or Correct usage of words in English. In this type of questions, each sentence is divided into four parts and each part is marked below as A, B, C, and D. There is a mistake in any one part of the sentence. The students are required to detect which part contains the mistake. If there is no mistake in any part of the sentence, it should be marked as No Error (Option E).

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Essay Writing Tips for Bank Exams Descriptive Paper - Planning

This is the Lesson IV of our Bank Exams Descriptive Paper Writing (Essays) Lesson Series. Before reading this article, it is advisable to read previous lessons first. 

In our previous post we have discussed about Preparation of Essay. In this post we shall discuss about Planning.

Planning

The ideas thus generated need to be logically arranged. Main ideas and supporting (subordinate) ideas need to be properly grouped together. Identify main ideas and group the relevant ideas around each of them. Develop each main idea into an independent paragraph. This exercise will help you decide on how many paragraphs your essay will have. While planning you can use tree diagrams, a table / column or note-form as follows.

• Topic : English in the 21st Century
• Introduction :
• English as the world language
• Spread of English - an overview
• Facts about English :
• Users of English
• English as a window to the world
• Literature
• Culture
• Ideas
• Use in business, trade and industry
• Information Technology :
• Dominance of Information Technology
• Role of English in IT
• Conclusion

Practical Techniques you should follow to Improve your Reading Speed

This article is posted as the LESSON 3 under the lecture series of Reading Comprehension Exercises of Competitive Exams. If you are new to this series please go through our Lecture Series I and II to get  complete knowledge on the topic.

Read Lesson I here

Read Lesson II here

Friends,  first let us try answer one question, Why does the reading speed differ from person to person? Let us take a statement...

Important Tips for Reading Comprehension

1. Understand the given topic in your own words

I remember when we used to write essays or ‘compositions’ in school. We always started out making a road map of key words which reflected our ideas. After we came up with a skeleton for the essay, we began putting it together; filling in all the blanks with sentences and words. We kept just two things in mind – never lose track of the ideas and their sequence, and use big words with impeccable grammar. It was guaranteed we’d get good marks on our essay.

A reading comprehension passage in the GRE, is just that. It is a thread of ideas – basic ideas, with big words and embellishment that sometimes confuse the readers, rather than helping them understand what exactly is being talked about. The way we can begin understanding what is being said, is to try and get the passage back into it’s simple form. That is your first tip.

Don’t lose the structure of the passage. When a passage is split into paragraphs, it means that each paragraph is based on a different aspect of the topic. For example, the first paragraph may deal with a certain theory, the second paragraph may tell you how the theory came about, and the third paragraph outlines the objections that this theory faces from various quarters.

The ETS Website gives us a few guidelines to follow. They are the people who make the test, so it would be prudent to listen to what they have to suggest:

• Try to distinguish main ideas from supporting ideas or evidence.
• Try to distinguish ideas that the author is advancing from those he or she is merely reporting.
• Try to distinguish ideas that the author is strongly committed to from those he or she advances as hypothetical or speculative.
• Try to identify the main transitions from one idea to the next.
• Try to identify the relationship between different ideas. For example:
  • Are they contrasting? Are they consistent?
  • Does one support the other?
  • Does one spell the other out in greater detail?
  • Does one apply the other to a particular circumstance?

To do #1: Read the passage quickly, once – This is called skimming. Then read it slowly. Write down keywords and ideas in simple form; each paragraph is a main idea or collection of actions. Find them, understand how the keywords link to the next. If you understand the relationships between keywords or actions and their consequences, half your work is done. This is summarizing the passage in your own words.

2. Understand what is being asked in the RC Questions

The same principles apply here too. Interpret the questions into your own words! Don’t just read the questions and try to find similar words in the passage and try to answer – this is the wrong way to go about it. The ETS people know that test takers employ this (wrong) strategy, so they construct questions in such a way, that people solving the Reading Comprehension in this fashion almost always get the answers wrong. The best way to tackle them is to INTERPRET the questions into your own words. Compare with the ideas that you have earlier summarized from the passage.

Don’t read the answers as soon as you finish reading the questions. I know this may seem counter-intuitive because some questions end in “which of the following” or some similar phrase. When this happens, replace the “which of the following” with a “what”. This will help you get the right answer from your earlier summary. Even questions that seemingly force the test taker to look at the options and then compare with the passage can be approached in this fashion. You have to remember that as long as your summary is perfect, all the answers can be obtained from it.

Some answers have words which are directly taken from the passage, but are actually the wrong choices. When someone has just gone through the passage, these are words that tend to stick in memory. When the same words are repeated in the answer choices, it seems like the choosing that option would be the correct thing to do. Again, a trap.

To do #2: Read the question, interpret it into your own words and try getting the answer from the basic summary you have constructed. It is important that you understand EXACTLY what you need to do. The options all reflect various levels of understanding of the passage and questions, that is why even the wrong options seem right till you whittle the topic and its questions down to their skeletons.

3. Don’t get influenced by personal opinion and external factors

Passage topics in the GRE Reading Comprehension section are taken from a vast and diverse variety of subjects. Some of these topics you may already be familiar with, and sometimes you may not agree with the views of the topic that is presented to you. Remember that this is only a test of your understanding, and not whether your own opinions reflect those in the passage.

You may feel strongly about a certain topic, but stick to the subject and the context of the topic in the passage. Your answers should be pertinent to the questions asked, and the basis of your answers should be the passage itself! This is yet another way ETS frames the answer options to RC questions in order to trap test takers into choosing the wrong answer. Remember, ETS is not testing you on your opinions, but on your understanding and analysis.

How to Get Good Marks in Reading Comprehension ?

Friends, Now a days, almost every competitive exam asking reading comprehension questions. In these type of questions, they will give you a passage / comprehension and will ask you to read that and answer the questions followed by that passage. Actually this Reading Comprehension section is designed to test the ability of the student to read a passage and understand its contents and his ability to draw inferences on the basis of what is read. In simple words, the student's ability to grasp the contents of the passage in a relatively short span of time is what is being tested.

English Correction of Sentences Excercises with Explanations

Friends, we've already updated short notes on Correction of Sentences which is very important topic of English Section for Upcoming competitive exams. you can read that post here. Here are some practice problems on Sentence Corrections with Explanations.  Just Read each sentence to find out whether there is any grammatical/idiomatic/spelling mistake/error in it. The error, if any, will be in one part of the s.entence. Mark the number of that part with error as your answer. If there is no error, mark (5). And you can check the answer below the questions with explnations. You can read more english related stuff and more practice papers for SBI POs Here. All The Best J

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R. S. Aggrawal's Objective English - Pdf

Friends, Today we are giving you the pdf file of R. S. Aggrawal's Objective General English. This book will be helpful for you in the English section of all the competitive Exams. As friends, as we already said, NOTHING will happen with just downloading and saving this file into your systems. Read....... and Practice daily. Here is the Download Link. All The Best. You can get more downloads Here. Like our Facebook Page for more updates. Happy Reading :)

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Tenses - Shortnotes with Examples for Bank Exams

Friends, we've already posted a pdf version of the English Tenses' basics. You can get that post Here. As tenses are the heart of the English grammar and these play an important role in getting good marks in Competitive Exams people are asking us to put a little stress in the Grammar Exercises of Tenses. So here we are giving a pdf file which gives you a clear understanding about the usage of tenses with examples. Just have a glance and we assure you that this will be really helpful in improving your rank in the English section of all the Competitive Exams. You can more posts about English Here. Please Like our Facebook page for daily updates. Happy Reading :)


Download Pdf file of Tenses Short notes with examples from here

Idioms and Phrases for Bank Exams

Friends, in today's post we shall discuss about Idioms and Phrases of the English Language section of Bank Exams.  Now a days Idioms are Phrases have became an important part of the English Language test in not only Banks but also almost all Entrance Exams like SSC, LIC, NDA, CDS, B Ed, etc.  Idioms are expressions which are peculiar to a language. They have peculiar meanings which cannot be guessed. Idioms and phrases are similar to "muhavare" that we have in Hindi. Here is the list of some important Idioms and Phrases. We are giving them in pdf format so that it will be helpful for you to prepare. you can get more downloads Here. Please LIKE our Facebook page here for frequent updates. Happy Reading :)

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Punjab National Bank - Clerks - English Language - 2011

Here is the previous solved paper of the Punjab National Bank Clerk's English Language Section (Dated 19-06-2011). Happy Reading J

Directions–(Q.1 to 15) Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases/sentences have been printed in bold/italics to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

“The best man in the whole tribe is Manute the brave", everyone would say, You could see for yourself, at any time of the day, just how brave he was. He would jump to the ground from amazing heights, he would fight poisonous snakes, he would catch scorpions with his bare hands, and could cut the palm of his own hand with a knife-without even a flinch. They said the exact opposite about Pontoma. No one had seen him catch even a monkey.

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