Vocabulary and Grammar

What is being tested

• A synonym is a word with almost the same meaning as another (big – large).
• An antonym is a word with the opposite meaning (big – small).

Most questions give a word (sometimes inside a sentence, with the word in bold or underlined) and four options. Words rarely have exactly the same meaning; the exam wants the option that is closest in the given context.

Method

Word building

Common prefixes

Common roots

bene (good): benefit, benevolent · mal (bad): malice, malevolent · dict (say): dictate, predict · scrib/script (write): describe, script · spect (look): inspect, spectator · port (carry): transport, portable · vert/vers (turn): convert, reverse · cred (believe): credible, incredible · chron (time): chronology, chronic · pathy (feeling): sympathy, apathy · phobia (fear), philia (love).

Frequently tested words

The lists below give common exam words with a close synonym and an antonym. Learn them in groups, not one at a time.

Positive words

Negative words

Neutral or general words

Higher-level exam words

Near-synonyms and shades of meaning

Some words are close but not identical.

Word forms to remember (often used in antonym options)

• Antonym through a prefix: possible → impossible, legal → illegal, regular → irregular, honest → dishonest, mortal → immortal, visible → invisible, ability → inability, agree → disagree.
• Opposite words with no shared form: victory – defeat, love – hatred, hope – despair, expand – contract, wisdom – folly, accept – reject, praise – criticise, guilty – innocent, rural – urban, vertical – horizontal.

Common mistakes

1. Choosing a synonym in an antonym question (or the reverse) — read the question line twice.
2. Ignoring context — the word may be used in a less common meaning.
3. Picking a word with the right meaning but the wrong tone (e.g., stingy for thrifty).
4. Ignoring the part of speech — a noun should be matched with a noun.
5. Skipping unknown words — use prefixes, roots and the sentence to guess.

How to build vocabulary

1. Read editorials and note the new words with their sentences.
2. Learn words in groups (all words meaning brave, lazy, increase).
3. Learn synonym and antonym together — each pair is one memory.
4. Revise the lists regularly; use each new word in your own sentence.

Why parts of speech matter

Every word in a sentence does a job. The job decides the word's part of speech. Almost every grammar question in a competitive exam — error spotting, fill in the blanks, sentence improvement — is really a question about which part of speech should sit in which place. If you can name the job of each word, most errors become visible.

The same word can do different jobs:

• Light is a noun in "the light is on", an adjective in "a light bag", and a verb in "light the lamp".
• Round is a preposition in "round the corner", an adverb in "he turned round", and an adjective in "a round table".

So always decide by how the word is used in the sentence, not by how it looks.

The eight parts of speech

Noun

Kinds of noun

• Proper noun — the name of a particular person or place, written with a capital: Ganga, Satish.
• Common noun — a name shared by a class: river, engineer.
• Collective noun — a group treated as one: committee, team, jury, fleet.
• Material noun — a substance: steel, cement, water.
• Abstract noun — a quality, state or action: courage, poverty, departure.

Countable and uncountable

Countable nouns have a plural and take a/an, many, few: a bridge, many bridges. Uncountable nouns have no plural and take much, little: information, advice, furniture, luggage, equipment, knowledge, news, scenery, work, progress, evidence. So we say "a piece of advice", never "an advice" or "advices".

Number and gender

• Regular plural: add -s/-es (box → boxes); -y after a consonant becomes -ies (city → cities); some -f/-fe words become -ves (knife → knives, leaf → leaves).
• Irregular: man → men, child → children, tooth → teeth, mouse → mice, foot → feet.
• Same in singular and plural: sheep, deer, fish, series, species.
• Always plural in form: scissors, trousers, spectacles, clothes, thanks, riches.
• Singular in form but meaning a subject: mathematics, physics, economics, news, measles — take singular verbs.
• Compound nouns pluralise the main word: brother-in-law → brothers-in-law, passer-by → passers-by.
• Gender: masculine, feminine, neuter and common (student, teacher, doctor).

Possessive

Add 's to singular nouns (the engineer's plan) and to plural nouns not ending in -s (men's, children's). Plural nouns ending in -s take only the apostrophe (the engineers' union). For things, prefer of: the door of the room, not "the room's door".

Pronoun

Rules that are tested

1. Case: subject form for the doer (She and I went), object form after a verb or preposition (between you and me, not "between you and I"; let him go).
2. Agreement: the pronoun agrees with its noun in number, person and gender: Each of the boys did his work. Everyone must bring his or her (or their) pass.
3. Order of persons: in a good sentence the order is 2nd, 3rd, 1st (You, he and I) for happy statements; for a fault or blame it is 1st, 2nd, 3rd (I, you and he are to blame).
4. Who / whom: who is the subject, whom the object: The man whom we met is an engineer.
5. That vs which: that introduces a restricting clause and is used after all, only, superlatives, and both persons and things (This is the best that I can do); which is used for a non-restricting clause with a comma.
6. Reflexive pronoun is never used as a subject: ✗ Myself will go. → ✓ I myself will go.
7. Each other for two, one another for more than two.