Tenses, Articles and Prepositions

Grammar is the silent half of marks in any English paper. An examiner who sees consistently correct tenses, articles and prepositions over a two-hour script will round upwards on every borderline judgement; one who sees a hat-trick of basic errors in the first paragraph will round downwards. This lesson focuses on the three areas that produce the most mistakes in CSS scripts.

1. Tenses

English has three time frames (past, present, future) crossed with four aspects (simple, continuous, perfect, perfect continuous) — twelve tenses in all.

Tense	Example	Use
Simple Present	She writes	Habitual / general truth
Present Continuous	She is writing	Action happening now
Present Perfect	She has written	Action begun in past, relevant now
Present Perfect Cont.	She has been writing	Action begun in past, still ongoing
Simple Past	She wrote	Completed action in the past
Past Continuous	She was writing	Ongoing past action
Past Perfect	She had written	Action completed before another past action
Past Perfect Cont.	She had been writing	Ongoing action before another past action
Simple Future	She will write	Future action
Future Continuous	She will be writing	Ongoing action in future
Future Perfect	She will have written	Action that will be completed by a future point
Future Perfect Cont.	She will have been writing	Ongoing action up to a future point

Worked example — tense consistency

Wrong: When the bell rang, the students were finished their work and pack their bags. Correct: When the bell rang, the students had finished their work and were packing their bags.

The past perfect ("had finished") shows the work was done before the bell rang; the past continuous ("were packing") shows action ongoing at the moment of ringing. Mixing tenses inside one sentence without these markers creates the ungrammatical original.

2. Articles: a, an, the

A noun in English is almost always preceded by a determiner. The three articles are a, an and the.

• A before a consonant sound: a book, a university (university starts with the /j/ sound, so a, not an).
• An before a vowel sound: an apple, an hour (hour begins with a silent h).
• The — definite, for a specific item: the book on my table.

The "definite" article: when to use the

• Before unique objects: the sun, the moon, the President, the equator.
• Before superlatives: the best, the largest.
• Before names of rivers, oceans, deserts, mountain ranges: the Indus, the Pacific, the Cholistan, the Karakoram.
• Before names of countries that are plural or contain a common noun: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the USA. (But: Pakistan, India, France — no article.)
• Before plural family names: the Sharifs visited yesterday.

When NOT to use the

• Before most singular country, city, person and language names: Pakistan, Lahore, Iqbal, Urdu.
• Before abstract nouns used generally: Honesty is the best policy.
• Before meal names in general: We had lunch at noon. (But: The lunch she served was delicious.)
• Before sports and games: He plays cricket.

Worked example — articles

Wrong: The Allama Iqbal was a great poet of Urdu. Correct: Allama Iqbal was a great poet of Urdu.

Iqbal is a person's name — no article. Of Urdu is also correct: Urdu is a language, taken generally.

Wrong: Indus is the longest river of Pakistan. Correct: The Indus is the longest river in Pakistan.

Rivers always take the. In is preferred to of with "longest river in [country]".

3. Prepositions — the silent assassins

Prepositions have to be memorised in collocation with the verbs and nouns they accompany. Below are pairings that consistently catch out CSS candidates.

Verb / phrase	Correct preposition	Example
accuse	of	accused of theft
insist	on	insisted on a refund
congratulate	on	congratulated him on his promotion
consist	of	consists of three parts
differ from / differ with	from a thing / with a person	differs from yours; differs with me
die of (a disease) / die from (an injury)	of / from	died of cancer; died from a fall
superior	to	superior to all others (NOT than)
inferior	to	inferior to the original
married	to	married to a doctor (NOT with)
compare to / compare with	to (similarity) / with (analysis)	compared his work to a poem; compared the two essays with each other
invest	in	invested in shares
absorbed	in	absorbed in his book
capable	of	capable of leading
afraid	of	afraid of failure
ashamed	of	ashamed of his behaviour
good	at	good at maths
arrive	at (a small place) / in (a country, city)	arrived at the airport; arrived in Lahore

The three areas covered in this lesson account for the bulk of casual grammar marks. Spend twenty minutes a day reading well-edited English (newspaper editorials, classic essays), and your ear will internalise these patterns long before any rule list does.