Avoiding Grammar mistakes in English CBSE board exam?

For education in English medium schools, central board of secondary education (CBSE) has stayed the board of education in India. Every competitive examination in India follows the syllabus by CBSE and especially, when it comes to English, CBSE follows comprehensive study materials, consisting of reading and advanced skills in writing. Over the years, it has revised its course structure in English making it more worthwhile for learning. For instance, its prescribed texts for studying this language have a lot of efficacy in developing knowledge base for the students and give them strong foundation in the subject. So far as grammar is concerned, it has also prescribed A-Z in it that could give students strong base in correct writing. Although, the course curricular is holistic for learning the language, students continue to commit silly grammatical mistakes, while writing their papers in English CBSE board education. Such mistakes not only make the students lose marks in the subjects but give examiner wrong impression and make overall grading poor. The students could take few steps, which would make their writings free of mistakes and improve their scores in the subjects to a great extent.

Devote some time in a day for improvement in English

 As a student goes to higher class, he has to struggle to learn many subjects. But at the same time, the student faces the pressure to improve his skill in communication. As communication involves flair in both writing and speaking, the students find this an uphill task to improve both the aspects, while simultaneously facing pressure to excel in other subjects. The student could develop excellent grasp over every subject other than English but he would express his caliber only in English. So the need comes here to develop writing as well as verbal communication skill that would make the answers in the examination decent and fetch better grades in every subject and give him confidence in facing interview. As writing skill in English is vital for writing in examination, the student needs to devote some time every day to study and improve his skill in writing in English. An experienced teacher would of course recommend the students to devote some time every day for writing a page or two in English and get it corrected from the teacher. Writing an essay on some relevant subject enhances the skill in writing to a great extent as the student presents his or her views in structured way that increases quality of presentation and writing skill of student. The student could write an essay in Microsoft-word and get it corrected online. The feedback about the mistakes would make student s careful and improve the writing skill more.

Increase reading of books other than texts

Voracious reading of books other than texts brings correction of grammatical mistakes in the writing of the student. Mistakes in grammar would reduce gradually when the student keeps on reading journals, fictions, magazines, auto-biographies, and other important works of the famous authors. Such reading would not only do away with the grammatical mistakes in the answers compiled by the students but improve the quality of structured presentation in the answer-sheet of the students. Take for example, when a student gives a suitable quotation  in his answer paper of History, it adds to the quality of answers by the student and the examiner knows that the student has depth in understanding and clarity about the subject. The repetition of grammatical mistakes in the answer-sheets takes place, when boys and girls only go through the text books and abstain from reading other books. This degrades their command over language and grasp over grammar.

Avoid memorizing grammar

A number of students keep on memorizing the lessons from grammar books in English. But unfortunately this would not add to command over this language. The students have the poor understanding that like “Sanskrit”, they could successfully build their knowledge in grammar simply by going through the lessons in books repeatedly and memorizing the rules in the chapters for grammar. But unfortunately, this does not happen in reality. Only increasing  quantity of reading could reduce the grammatical mistakes to a great extent and make the writing perfect after some time.

Avoid assuming the meaning of words

Vocabulary is an important part of English language. Often students make the blunder of guessing the meaning of words. Ultimately, it proves fatal for the learners. Take for instance, the word “distinguish” means “to compare”, but when we write the word in past participle form- “distinguished”. As an adjective, the meaning of the word becomes “famous’. Slightest change in the form of use in grammar could bring a complete different meaning in English language. To get rid of such silly mistakes, the students need to refer to dictionary as frequently as possible. Referring repeatedly to dictionary brings complete clarity about the meanings of words in this language and creates perfect understanding about the use of words.

Work dedicatedly to build up vocabulary

The student needs to work dedicatedly to build up vocabulary effectively. Here it is important that he or she needs to learn at least one or two word every day. It is also essential that the student needs to know the correct use of words in forming sentences. Incorrect use of words in forming sentences could give rise to malapropism. Good grasp in vocabulary gives rise to command over English.

Sound knowledge in basics of grammar

 A sentence is defined as a group of words giving a complete meaning. Grammar is useful in making the meaning of sentence complete. It arranges the sequence of words in an order to create a complete meaning out of it. Tense, verbs, adverbs, noun, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, and use of adjectives are important in formation of sentences. The students have to learn the ground rules of these parts of grammar by reading the “dos’ and don’ts” of their applications. Once he is through about their use, he would get better grasp by reading of works of other authors. This would gradually add strength to his capacity in writing and speaking in English.

Get old question papers of English and practice answer writing

The students could get the old question papers of previous board examinations and practice writing the answers. By this, they get familiar with the necessary styles of writing answers, which are effective for getting high marks in English. By writing the answers of the earlier board examination in English and getting those checked by teachers, they know minutely about their mistakes in answer writing and get the grammatical mistakes corrected from the sentences. Teacher’s advice about improving quality of answers also helps a lot in writing answers in better ways with improvement in the structure of sentences and use of grammar. For instance, the students could take the opinion of teachers about making use of “direct speech” and “indirect speech” in the sentences, which would make the answers, appears more meaningful and structured. As it is well-said, that “practice makes perfect”, continued focus on making the sentences more attractive and meaningful would satisfy the evaluators to a great extent. Passion for reading and writing are the two best ways to get rid of grammatical mistakes in CBSE class 10^th board examinations and CBSE class 12^th board examinations.