Playbooks
16 playbooks behind every NDA English question
Each chapter of NDA English is a sealed question-type. One playbook per major subtopic, grouped by the strategic axis that matters: Recall / Rule / Reason.
- playbooks
- 16
- questions covered
- 900
- skill buckets
- 3
- years analysed
- 10
Recall — Vocab + Idioms
Pure memorisation. Either you know the word/idiom or you don't. 4 playbooks, 402 questions. 402 q total.
Vocabulary — Synonyms
150 stems, 150 unique words. Sentence-context picks the right register. 99% EASY+MOD.
150 q · 1% hard deep diveVocabulary — Antonyms
135 stems. Closer to 'pick the most opposite' than 'pick the most-different' — the bank's most common Antonyms trap is the same-direction near-synonym wrong option.
135 q · 2% hard deep diveVocabulary — Confusable pairs and word definitions
31 q across two thin subtopics — affect vs effect, principle vs principal, immediate vs imminent. Mostly handled by recognising the family.
31 q · 3% hard deep diveIdioms and Phrases
86 q, 85 unique idioms. The literal-meaning option is almost always a wrong choice — the figurative reading is the answer.
86 q · 3% hard deep dive
Rule — Errors + Grammar
Rule recognition + application. 8 playbooks across both chapters; Grammar chunk exploded post-2024. 223 q total.
Spotting Errors — Word choice, prepositions, punctuation
Largest Errors subtopic (29 q). Tests the confusables (affect/effect), preposition collocations (of/with/in), and oxford-comma edge cases.
29 q · 0% hard deep diveSpotting Errors — Subject-verb agreement
17 q. Cross-chapter with Grammar's S-V subtopic (10 q) — same rule, different format. Proximity-error trap is the dominant distractor.
17 q · 6% hard deep diveSpotting Errors — Tense and verb form
16 q. Past-perfect vs simple-past, reported speech tense-shift, conditional-clause verb form. Tense backshift in reported speech is the most-tested.
16 q · 0% hard deep diveSpotting Errors — Articles, pronouns, and mixed
43 q bundled: Articles+Determiners+Pronouns (14), No Error (14), Mixed Error Detection (15). The 'No Error' subtopic at 14% HARD is the bank's only Errors trap with real difficulty.
43 q · 5% hard deep diveSpotting Errors — Sentence improvement
10 q. Full-sentence underline; pick the best rewrite from 4 options. Tests register + conciseness as much as grammar.
10 q · 10% hard deep diveGrammar — Sentence completion
30 q, all post-2024. Fill-in-the-blank with two parallel blanks; tests verb-form + connector + register together.
30 q · 0% hard deep diveGrammar — Discourse markers and connectors
20 q. Pick the right because/although/however/moreover/so. Same skill the Cloze chapter rewards — drill them together.
20 q · 0% hard deep diveGrammar — Rules bundle (PoS, S-V, prepositions, speech, voice, articles)
58 q across the 7 thin grammar subtopics. Each tests one of the foundational rules — Parts of Speech (15), S-V (10), Prepositions (10), Direct/Indirect speech (7), Correct Sentence Identification (7), Articles+Determiners (6), Active/Passive (3).
58 q · 7% hard deep dive
Reason — RC + Rearrangement + Cloze + FIB
Context + logic. 4 playbooks. Sentence Rearrangement is the bank's only chapter with real HARD load. 275 q total.
Reading Comprehension
61 q across all three RC subtopics. Set-bound (4–8 q/passage). Inferential (43 q) dominates and is harder than Literal (14 q) or Vocab-in-context (4 q).
61 q · 7% hard deep diveCloze Test
45 q, zero HARD across the bank. 5–10 blank passage, mostly tests transitions and connectors. The single highest marks-per-hour playbook.
45 q · 0% hard deep diveSentence Rearrangement (PQRS + Paragraph Sequencing)
114 q. PQRS (92, 19% HARD) reorders 4 sentence parts inside one sentence; S1–S6 (22, 36% HARD) reorders middle 4 of a 6-sentence paragraph. Same lever — opener and closer cues.
114 q · 22% hard deep diveFill in the Blanks
55 q. Sentence-scoped (vs Cloze's passage scope). Contextual (45 q) tests vocab + collocation; Phrasal/Collocation (10 q) tests fixed phrasal verbs (look up, get over, take after).
55 q · 2% hard deep dive