As you all know, this section is a marks scoring one. First of all let’s take up vocabulary for consideration. Questions relating to vocabulary
are asked both in Paper-I and Paper-II.
Let’s have a glance over the items involved in vocabulary: Word-meanings, synonyms, antonyms, spellings, one-word substitutes,
word formation, choosing right words, suffixes, collocations, homonyms, idioms, irregular plurals, prefixes, binomials etc.
To have mastery over the use of words in the right approach, you have to read a wide range of books with an eye on the use of certain words mainly ‘structural words’.
Apart from reading your reader, you have to make it a habit of reading other various books such as biographies and autobiographies of eminent persons, periodicals, comics and especially newspapers! You
should invariably have a good dictionary of English, say Active Study Dictionary of English, or the like. Keep the dictionary on your table so that you can refer to it wherever you find a new word while reading.
Reading of newspapers and constant referring to the dictionary pays to enrich your word-power i.e., your vocabulary.
Do’s: Reading of the prescribed text book and other books is an advantage. You can grow thinking power and imagination after every reading. Pause for a white after reading every paragraph.
Don’ts: Never depend upon guides. Keep in mind that there is no short-cut for success. Spoon feeding doesn’t pay.
Questions such as fill in the blanks or in cloze type are asked under vocabulary. So a thorough knowledge of vocabulary is essential for scoring good marks. Further, this section will contain questions
related to grammar which will be properly contextualised by embedding them in appropriate discourses. The chosen text should be from different genres i.e., story, description, conversation, etc targeted at this
level.
The grammar and vocabulary items will not be restricted to class 10 Text-book, but will be chosen even from the lower classes. So you have to be thorough with the functional grammar.
School level English grammar, Nouns and Pronouns, Articles, Determiners, Adjectives, Adverbs, Tenses, Verb forms modals, Subject
verb Agreement, Non-finites, Active and Passive voice, Degrees of comparison, Reported speech, Prepositions, Conjunctions, Phrasal verbs, Transformation of sentences, Conditionals, Correction of sentences, etc.,
Essay:
It is a short piece of writing that discusses, describes or analyses a topic. It can describe personal opinions or just report information.
There are many different kinds of essays. Some of the most common ones are: Expository, Compare and contrast, Cause and Effect, Argumentative, Informal, Critical Review, Analytical, etc.