Grammar & Vocabulary
Syllabus Unit: English Language
Why it matters
Chapter overview
Grammar and Vocabulary round out SBI PO English with rule-based, high-accuracy scoring opportunities — error spotting, para jumbles, and vocabulary-in-context questions all follow a fixed, learnable rulebook, unlike RC's judgment calls, making this the section where careful preparation converts most directly into marks.
1Error Spotting & Sentence Correction
SBI PO error-spotting tests a fixed checklist of grammar rules, not creative writing sense — run the sentence through the checklist and the error surfaces.
Learning Objectives
- Check subject-verb agreement first, including tricky singular indefinite pronouns (each, either, neither, everyone).
- Verify tense consistency across a sentence, especially in conditional and reported-speech constructions.
- Check preposition usage after fixed verb/adjective combinations (e.g., 'married to', not 'married with').
- Identify pronoun-antecedent mismatches in both number and gender.
Key Terms
Error-spotting questions test a small, fixed set of grammar rules repeatedly. Running every sentence through the same priority checklist — rather than relying on how the sentence 'sounds' — catches errors reliably and quickly.
The checklist, in priority order
- Subject-verb agreement — does the verb's number match the true subject, ignoring any phrase in between?
- Tense consistency — do the verb tenses across the sentence (or a conditional's two clauses) follow standard sequencing?
- Preposition usage — is the fixed verb/adjective + preposition combination correct?
- Pronoun agreement — does every pronoun match its antecedent in number and gender?
- Article and parallelism checks — is 'a/an/the' used correctly, and do listed items share the same grammatical form?
Worked example: 'Each of the students have submitted their assignment.' The true subject is 'Each', a singular indefinite pronoun — the plural-looking 'students' is just part of a prepositional phrase ('of the students') and doesn't affect the verb. The verb must be 'has submitted', not 'have submitted'.