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Spotting Errors (Grammar)

Part of the SSC CGL Tier 2 study roadmap. English Language topic ssc2-en-001-spotting-errors of English Language.

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Spotting Errors (Grammar)

🟢 Lite — Quick Review (1h–1d)

Rapid summary for last-minute revision before your exam.

Spotting Errors items present a sentence with one part underlined (a/b/c/d); you must mark the grammatically incorrect segment. In SSC CGL Tier 2, this section carries 20–25 questions × 0.5 marks (with 0.25 negative marking) in Paper-II English.

The Must-Know Triggers

  • Subject–Verb Agreement (SVA): singular subject → singular verb. Heads-up words: each, every, either, neither, anyone, everyone, somebody, a lot of, the list/array/fleet of + plural noun still takes a singular verb.
  • Tense Consistency: keep one tense inside a clause; only shift with a clear time signal (yesterday, now, since 2015).
  • Article Choice: a/an for new singular countable nouns; the for specific/known nouns; zero article with plurals or uncountables in general statements.
  • Preposition Pairs: since + point of time, for + duration; at/on/in (place/time: smallest → largest).

One-line trick: Locate the main subject first, then walk left-to-right checking agreement → tense → article → preposition → pronoun → modifier.

🟡 Standard — Regular Study (2d–2mo)

Standard content for students with a few days to months.

How an Item Is Built

Each sentence contains four underlined chunks, but only one contains the error. Three chunks are deliberately clean to look “equally correct,” so a surface-level read misleads. The right method is vertical scanning by grammar rule, not horizontal reading.

The Seven Rule-Buckets Tested Most

#Rule BucketTypical Distractor
1SVA (with intervening phrase)“The box of chocolates are…” → is
2Tense shiftPast + present mixed without a time marker
3Article misuse”I need a information” → an / some
4Preposition pair”since five years” / “for Monday”
5Pronoun mismatch”Everyone must bring their ID” → his or her
6Modal semanticsmust used for future probability, not just obligation
7Parallelism”to read, writing and revise” → all gerunds or all infinitives

Pronoun & Voice Specifics

  • Who = persons, which = things, that = restrictive clause. Don’t use who for “the company who…”.
  • Only transitive verbs passivise. “The accident was happened” is wrong; intransitive verbs stay active.
  • Dangling participle: “Walking down the lane, the houses looked old” — houses don’t walk; rewrite the subject.

Exam-pointer: Roughly 40–45% of SSC CGL Tier 2 spotting-error items are SVA or tense based. Master those two buckets first for the highest mark-to-effort ratio.

Typical Question Patterns

  • A long sentence with a prepositional phrase separating subject and verb (“The teacher along with the students is going”).
  • Comparisons needing parallel form: “He is as good if not better than his brother” → as good as, if not better than.
  • Adverb placement errors: “He never has spoken” vs. “He has never spoken” (mid-position rule for never).

🔴 Extended — Deep Study (3mo+)

Comprehensive coverage for students on a longer study timeline.

Edge Cases Examiners Exploit

  • “One of the + plural noun + singular verb” is correct because one is the head: “One of the boys who was absent” — the relative clause is plural, but the antecedent rule is set by one.
  • Collective nouns behave differently in British vs American English; SSC follows British — team, jury, committee take a singular verb when acting as a unit.
  • “Data, criteria, phenomena, media” are plural; their singulars are datum, criterion, phenomenon, medium. Watch for “the data is” traps.
  • Less vs fewer: fewer with countable plurals; less with uncountable mass nouns. “Less people” is a classic wrong choice.
  • Too/enough order: too + adjective (+ to + V), adjective + enough (+ to + V) — never too much pleased; the correct intensifier for past participles is very much.
  • Because / because of: because takes a clause; because of takes a noun phrase or gerund. Mixing them is a guaranteed half-mark loss.

Connections to Adjacent SSC Tasks

Spotting-Error competence feeds directly into Sentence Improvement, Fill in the Blanks (modals/prepositions), and Active–Passive rewriting in the same paper. Strengthening SVA and tense here raises accuracy in Cloze Test and Para Jumbles as well, because these rules govern clause linking.

Strategy note: Tier 2 is a 2-hour, 200-mark computer-based test. Allocate ~8–10 minutes for the entire 20–25 question spotting block — that’s 20–30 seconds per item, so a first-pass vertical scan (subject → verb → tense → article) is faster than a full re-read.

Two Practice Prompts

  1. “Each of the candidates (a) / have submitted (b) / their forms (c) / before the deadline. (d) / No error” — identify the chunk.
  2. “Since the COVID-19 pandemic (a) / the tourism industry (b) / has been struggling (c) / for revival measures. (d) / No error” — fix the preposition pair.

(Answers covered by the rules above: (b) “have submitted” → “has submitted”; (d) “for” → “since/to get”.)

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