The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan

                                   


FUNCTIONAL ENGLISH

General:

The paper was well-designed and aimed at testing the knowledge of basic grammar and assessing the skill of writing essays, letters and comprehension. Candidates need to better organize themselves and focus on the following areas:

  • Instructions should be read carefully.
  • Handwriting and presentation of work should be up to the standard of intermediate students.
  • Alternatives/alternate answers should be avoided.
  • Punctuation should be focused wherever necessary throughout the paper.
  • Questions should be numbered correctly. 

Question-wise comments:

Q.1

This was an easy question, where the correct meaning of the given words had to be picked from the list. Most students were able to link the words and their meanings and scored well.

 

 

 

Q.2

(a)

Formation of sentences using expressions/idioms:

  • It was generally observed that the sentence construction was very poor and the quality of sentences was unsatisfactory.
  • Punctuation was not focused upon.
  • Rote learning of sentences from text books and keys should be avoided.
  • Many students form two different sentences using the same phrase for the examiner to choose the correct one. This should be avoided.

 

 

 

 

(b)

This was an easy question in which the blanks were to be filled with one of the two given words that fit correctly in the sentence structure. Most students scored well in this part.

 

 

 

Q.3

(a)

Antonyms: a good number of students scored well in this question with the exception of a few who were unable to produce correct antonyms. Some candidates totally misunderstood and gave synonyms instead of antonyms.

 

 

 

 

(b)

In this part students were asked to make sentences using the same word as a verb and a noun. It was seen that students were more comfortable using the words as a verb, however, could not use the word as a noun correctly in sentences. Some students changed the word regret to regression and suspect to suspection in an attempt to convert the word to a noun, which was incorrect. Moreover, the word suspect was also commonly used in sentences in place of expect e.g. ‘he suspects that he will pass the examination’ instead of ‘he expects that he will pass the examination’.

 

 

 

Q.4

99% students were unable to change the negative sentences into affirmative. This turned out to be the lowest scoring question.

 

 

 

Q.5

(a)

This part of the question required the students to change the narration. The score in this question greatly varied. There were some students who scored up to 80% and others who scored poor marks as they did not change the tense to past tense.

 

 

 

 

(b)

In punctuation students generally made the following mistakes:

  • Speech marks were not used correctly.
  • Capital letters were not written where required.
  • The abbreviation Ph.D was written incorrectly.
  • Commas were often missed out.
     

 

(c)

Students had to change the voice of the sentences in this part. The question was poorly attempted and the score was very low.
   

Q.6

Candidates lacked the knowledge of adverbial clauses altogether and found it difficult to combine two sentences into one. Majority used conjunctions instead of adverbial clauses.

 

 

 

Q.7 & 8

Letter writing:

  • Most of the candidates made mistakes in the format of the letter.
  • Tenses and spelling were weak.
  • Ending of the letter was abrupt with complimentary close completely missed out in some letters.
  • In Q8. some students did not address the letter to the manager sales of Dawlance Pvt. Ltd. And furthermore persuasive strategy was not used to ask the company for replacement and claim the delivery charges.
   

Q.9

Comprehension: answers to the questions from the given passage were not given in own words and were terse and abrupt in most cases. Précis writing was highly unsatisfactory where students did not care for the word-count and failed to give a concise summary.

 

 

Q.10

Essay writing:

Those candidates who wrote on Tsunami had mostly learned it from standard English magazines such that most essays had the same beginning and ending.

Those who wrote on ‘if I were the captain of Pakistan cricket team’, did a fairly good job. Ideas were mostly original and interesting. Essays also displayed the overall interest and knowledge of the game by majority of the candidates.

Due to spelling mistakes and poor vocabulary students were unable to score high marks in this question.

It is suggested that candidates should develop a habit of reading regularly and focus on their spellings, tenses and vocabulary so that they are able to converse fluently in English and improve upon their writing skills that would enable them to score good marks in the paper.