Error Spotting
About 7 min · English Comprehension · English
Time worked out from the lesson's 486 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.
Error Spotting is a high-scoring section in SSC CGL English Comprehension that tests your grasp of grammatical rules without requiring you to write anything. Each question presents a sentence divided into 4–5 parts (usually A, B, C, D, and sometimes E for "No error"), and you must identify which part contains a grammatical mistake. The beauty of this section is its predictability—the same error types recur. If you master the common error patterns, you can quickly scan sentences and spot mistakes within 20–30 seconds per question.
Key ideas
- Subject-Verb Agreement: The verb must match the subject in number (singular/plural) and person (first/second/third). Intervening phrases between subject and verb often create confusion, but the verb always agrees with the main subject, not nearby nouns.
- Tense Consistency: Related clauses in a sentence must maintain logical tense sequence. Mixing past and present inappropriately or using incorrect tense forms are common traps.
- Preposition Errors: English prepositions follow idiomatic usage, not logical rules. Phrases like "differ from" (not "differ with"), "consists of" (not "consists with"), and "arrive at" (not "arrive in" for small places) must be memorized.
- Article Usage: Choosing between a/an/the or using no article depends on whether the noun is countable, specific, or general. Omitting required articles or adding unnecessary ones are frequent errors.
- Pronoun Reference: Pronouns must clearly refer to a specific antecedent and match it in number, gender, and person. Ambiguous reference or pronoun-antecedent disagreement signals an error.
Watch out for
- Ignoring the main subject due to intervening phrases: Students see "The bouquet of flowers are" and think plural "flowers" needs "are," but the subject is "bouquet" (singular), requiring "is." Fix: Always identify the core subject by stripping away prepositional phrases.
- Confusing "since" and "for" with time expressions: Writing "since three hours" instead of "for three hours" or "for 2015" instead of "since 2015." Fix: Remember — since = point in time, for = duration.
- Missing pronoun-antecedent errors: Failing to notice "Each student must bring their books" where "each" is singular but "their" is plural. Fix: Check that pronouns match their antecedents in number.
Quick reference
- Subject-verb agreement: singular subject = singular verb, regardless of intervening phrases.
- Since (point in time) vs For (duration) — drill this distinction repeatedly.
- Neither/nor, either/or: verb agrees with the nearest subject.
- One of the + plural noun = singular verb ("One of the boys is").
- Common preposition pairs: differ from, consists of, good at, angry with (person).
Check yourself: 3 questions
1. Identify the part with an error: 'He don't / know / the answer / to this question.'
2. Identify the part with an error: 'Each of the students / have submitted / their assignments / on time.'
3. Identify the part with an error: 'The teacher gave / the prize / to my brother and I / for our hard work.'
This lesson is cut from the topic's note, not rewritten. Fact-checked on 17 Oct 2026: an AI-assisted check of this note against cited sources; the errors it found were corrected that day. Some errors may remain. The questions are from Shishya's validated question bank.
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