Verbal Ability

General guidelines and illustrations:

The verbal section helps to evaluate your practicing the English Language and
to work with specialized technical vocabulary. It assesses your ability to understand.
A variety of questions are designed to assess the extent of your vocabulary, to
measure your ability to use words as tools in reasoning, to test your ability to discern
the relationships that exist both within written passages and among individual
groups of words. You are tested not only for your use of words but also for
reasoning and arguing.
This is a multiple – choice examination. You must answer a number of
questions in a given period of time. That is to say, you must not only have analytical
skill to comprehend the correct meaning of words but you must also be capable of
instant, precise and powerful judgment.

The following types of questions come under this section:

1. Sentence Completion
2. Analogy
3. Reconstruction of paragraphs
4. Synonyms / Antonyms
5. Sentence Improvement (i.e. style of expression)
6. Error Correction
7. Odd word out
8. Foreign words
These questions test your ability in formal written English. Many things
that are acceptable in spoken English are not acceptable in written English. This
section tests your ability to understand the meaning of a word individually and also
in relationship with other words.
All the types of questions listed above are not likely to be set in any
particular examination and all possible types are also not listed here.

5. Sentence Improvement:
This tests your mastery of written English. You must demonstrate your ability
to recognize incorrect (grammatical and logical) or ineffective (clear, concise,
idiomatic) expressions and choose the best (correct, concise, stylish, idiomatic) of
several suggested revisions. Each question begins with a sentence, all or parts of
which have been underlined. The answer choices represent the different ways of
rendering the underlined part.

Beautifully sanded and re-varnished, Bill proudly displayed the antique desk in his
den.
A. Beautifully sanded and re-varnished, Bill proudly displayed the antique desk in his
den.
B. Beautiful, sanded and re-varnished, in his den Bill proudly displayed his desk.
C. An antique, and beautifully sanded and re-varnished, in his den Bill proudly
displayed his desk.
D. Bill proudly displayed the antique desk beautifully sanded and re-varnished, in his
den.
E. Bill, beautifully sanded and revarnished in the den, proudly displayed the antique
desk.
 The correct answer is D. The sentence originally written suggests that it was
Bill who was sanded and revarnished. Only D. makes it clear that it was the desk,
not Bill that was refurbished.

6. Error corrections:
In this section, you have to pick the error in a given sentence. Each sentence
has 4 words or phrases underlined and labeled A, B, C and D. One of those 4 items
is incorrect. You must decide which one is incorrect. The error is always one of the
underlined words or phrases. You do not have to correct the error.
Example:
When moist air rises into lowest temperatures and becomes saturated,
condensation takes place.
The sentence should read. “when moist air rises into lower temperatures and
becomes saturated, condensation takes place”.
Therefore, you should choose B as error.
Sentences without error are, generally, not given, but still in some papers you
might find them.
This section will not give you a complete grammatical review of the English
language. Many excellent books have been written which analyze the structure of
English and its many exceptions. Attempt has been made in this section to organize,
in a methodical way, the strategic error areas that you can use as a checklist when
attempting to eliminate incorrect choices. English grammar can be intricate and
confusing. This section will alert you to spot errors and will focus on the grammatical
points frequently tested.

Strategies to be used
1. Read the question carefully for both meaning and structure, noting any
errors you recognize immediately.
2. If an error does not become immediately evident, consider each choice
independently, and see if it fits the correct pattern.
3. Remember that the error is always underlined.
4. Even if you think (A) or (B) is the correct answer, thoughtfully read and
consider the remaining choices so that you are absolutely certain that (A)
or (B) is truly the right choice.
5. Always select your answer after eliminating incorrect choices.