Sign in

Playbook

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.

questions in the bank
29
tagged HARD
0%
subtopic(s) covered
1
worked examples
1

When you’ll see it

4 segments of a sentence are underlined separately; identify which one contains an error.

How this question type works

Largest Spotting Errors subtopic (29 q). The error sits in one of four labelled segments. Wrong-preposition errors are the most-tested: 'depends from' (should be 'depends on'), 'different than' (should be 'different from'), 'married with' (should be 'married to'). Memorise the standard British-English preposition collocations.

Word-choice errors in this bucket are mostly the affect/effect family — same confusable list as the Vocabulary playbook. The Spotting Errors format embeds them in a longer sentence, so they're harder to spot than the bare 'pick affect or effect' framing.

Punctuation errors are rare (1–2 q across the bank) and almost always involve comma splices or oxford-comma differences. Don't over-drill these — preposition and word-choice are the bulk.

The sub-skills

The rules and habits that decide whether you get this question right.

  • Master the standard preposition collocations

    depend on, different from, married to, comprise of (no preposition!), prefer X to Y (not 'than'), accuse someone of, suspect of, blame for/on.

  • Scan for the confusable-pair errors

    affect/effect, accept/except, lose/loose. In a 4-segment underline, one segment containing a confusable pair is suspicious by default.

  • Read each underline as a stand-alone phrase

    If you can't immediately spot an error, re-read each underlined segment as if it were a stand-alone phrase — disconnected from context. The error often pops out.

1 worked example from the bank

Real past-year questions tagged to this playbook. Click to reveal options + solution.

Example 1Spotting ErrorsEASY
Directions (Q. Nos. 41 to 45): Each item in this section has a sentence with four underlined parts labeled (a), (b), (c) and (d). Read each sentence to find out whether there is any error in any underlined part. Indicate your response in the Answer Sheet accordingly.
Meaningful ecological‾\underline{\text{Meaningful ecological}} affects of the handloom‾\underline{\text{affects of the handloom}} sector can be optimized‾\underline{\text{sector can be optimized}} through recycling practices‾\underline{\text{through recycling practices}}.

[Q45 · Apr · 2026]

Traps to expect

Distractor shapes specific to this playbook. The page-wide Traps section covers the bank-level patterns.

  • Plausible-sounding wrong preposition

    'discuss about' and 'cope up with' are common spoken-English errors that look natural. Test against the standard collocation list, not against intuition.

  • Distractor segment

    Often one underlined segment contains an unusual word that LOOKS suspicious but is correct — the error is in a more innocuous-looking segment.

Drill every spotting errors — word choice, prepositions, punctuation question

29 questions from the bank, scoped to the named subtopic.

Drill the 29 questions

Related playbooks

Often paired with this one — drill these next if you found the worked examples above tractable.