General

The paper was easy but a large number of students could not achieve high scores. Following problems were generally identified:

·        Handwriting was not focused on

·        Punctuation was not focused on

·        Copying wrong words from the test paper due to carelessness

·        Poor spelling and tenses

Question wise comments:

Q.1

A very easy question.  Some students answered by drawing lines for matching of words. In many cases too much cutting made it impossible for the examiner to determine the students response. They need to write down the correct meaning at the side of the given word. Few candidates scored high while many failed to achieve average grade. The students are advised to read as many books, newspapers and magazines, to improve their vocabulary and understand the meaning and usage of words.  

Q.2

An easy question again. Majority could not achieve high grades which reflects their lack of reading habit and poor vocabulary.

Q.3

Candidates were instructed to form sentences by using the given phrases. Students misunderstood or had wrongs concepts of phrases/idioms particularly of “to feather one’s own nest”. Candidates did not attempt all Parts and those who did, used incorrect tenses & made spelling errors in their sentences.

Q.4

Synonyms were easy but the performance was generally poor. There were many spelling errors of synonyms also.

Q.5

This question had three parts a, b and c. In part a, six sentences were given for punctuation. The following mistakes were identified:

·        Candidates lacked the ability to use the speech marks correctly. They used a comma after a question mark and an exclamation mark. Moreover, in many cases quotation marks were written before a full stop or a question mark.

·        Structure/order of the sentence was often changed e.g. in (iii) the sentence (“Sorry,” said Sarah), was corrected into Sarah, said sorry.

In part (b) the superlative degree of certain adjectives were required. The following errors were generally identified.

·        In almost ninety percent of the cases, superlative of ‘polite’ was given as ‘politest’ whereas that of ‘little’ was given as ‘most little’.

·        In forming the sentences mostly the students failed to use the word ‘the’ before the superlative.

Part (c) was very easy and was correctly answered by most of the students.

Q.6

(a)

This part was about changing the form of narration. Many candidates could not do this part correctly because they did not focus on the tense of the sentence while changing the form. The first sentence should have been changed as “The general addressed his mutinous troops and (told them/said) that they have brought disgrace upon a famous regiment”. Very few could change it correctly.

The spelling of mutinous and regiment were in many cases written incorrectly although the words were appearing in the question also.

(b)

This was again an easy question but surprisingly, majority found it difficult and could not give correct answers.

(c)

Many candidates did not attempt this part. Very few students were able to do it correctly. Mostly the candidates were not aware of the proper placing of apostrophe. They had no idea about the usage of ‘s’ in singular and plural form of nouns.

Q.7

Letter Writing: Candidates could not achieve good grades due to the following   reasons.

·        90% of the candidates did not know how to address the editor of a local newspaper. The address written was wrong. Eg. “To the editor of the daily newspaper”  without mentioning any address. In many cases the date was missing. The students should note that in writing the letters, the name and addresses should be written however they should always be hypothetical such as XYZ, ABC Road, PQR etc. The name of the student and Roll no. should not be mentioned under any circumstances. In writing the address the students may simply write “ADDRESS” at the appropriate place.

·        No genuine hardships faced by the public was mentioned. They could have included  any of the following in their letter:

(a)      Irresponsible attitude of traffic police and city management,

(b)    Problems faced by patients, or persons going to airport or students going for examinations etc.

(c)      No information on the media about blockage of roads and the timings thereof,

·        The opening and closing paragraph of the letter were not at all   convincing.

·        Incorrect tenses were commonly used and the letter was messy with the exception of few who displayed excellent presentation.

Q.8

Very few students could secure 10 or more marks mainly due to weak grammar and tenses, spelling mistakes and wrong sentence structuring & layout.

Q.9

It was an easy question and many scored high.  However the following problems were generally noted:

·        The candidates did not take into account the word count while writing the summary. Some wrote almost a story. Some wrote less than 75 words.

·        The titles were not of a good standard.

·        A large number of students wrote “The Einstein” instead of “Einstein”.

·        Some important points were not mentioned in the summary.

·        Some candidates became too aggressive. They should display tolerance.

·        Same words as given in the passage were used to answer questions. Use of own words should be preferred.