English Notes · MDCAT Prep Lab

English has 12 main tense forms across past/present/future, each split into simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous — know the structural pattern (auxiliary + verb form) for each, not just the name.
Present simple is used for habitual actions and general truths ('Water boils at 100°C'); present continuous for actions happening right now or fixed future plans.
Present perfect (have/has + past participle) links a past action to the present ('I have finished') — MDCAT frequently tests confusion between past simple and present perfect.
Past perfect (had + past participle) describes an action completed before another past action — essential for narration/reported speech questions.
Subject–verb agreement: singular subjects take singular verbs even with intervening phrases ('Each of the students has...', not 'have').
Sequence of tenses: if the main clause is in the past, the subordinate clause generally also shifts to a past form, except for universal truths.
Watch for irregular past participles (gone/went, done/did, seen/saw) — a classic single-word error-spotting trap.

Active voice: subject performs the action ('The doctor examined the patient'); passive voice: subject receives the action ('The patient was examined by the doctor').
Passive formation: object of active sentence → subject of passive; verb becomes a form of 'be' + past participle; original subject becomes the 'by' agent (often omittable).
Only transitive verbs (verbs that take a direct object) can be converted to passive voice — intransitive verbs (e.g. 'arrive', 'sleep') cannot.
The tense of the active sentence determines the form of 'be' used in the passive (is/was/has been/will be, etc.) — match tense carefully during conversion.
Passive voice is preferred when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or obvious from context — common in scientific/formal writing, which MDCAT English draws heavily from.
Modal verbs form passive as modal + be + past participle ('The work must be completed').

Reporting verb changes: 'says/say' stays the same if reporting present speech, but 'said' triggers a full tense backshift in the reported clause.
Tense backshift: present simple → past simple, present continuous → past continuous, present perfect → past perfect, will → would, can → could, may → might.
Pronoun changes follow logic, not a fixed rule: shift pronouns to match who is speaking and who is being spoken about in the new context.
Time and place word changes: now → then, today → that day, tomorrow → the next day, here → there, this → that.
Interrogative sentences in indirect speech use reporting verbs like 'asked' and drop the question mark and auxiliary inversion ('He asked if/whether...' or 'He asked what...').
Imperative sentences use 'told/ordered/requested + to-infinitive' ('He told me to leave'), and exclamatory sentences typically become statements introduced by 'that', capturing the emotion in words rather than punctuation.

'A' before consonant sounds, 'an' before vowel sounds — based on pronunciation, not spelling ('an hour', but 'a university').
'The' is used for specific/previously mentioned nouns, superlatives, unique objects (the sun), and some geographic names (rivers, oceans, mountain ranges).
Zero article is used with plural/uncountable nouns in a general sense, most proper nouns, and languages/subjects.
Common fixed preposition pairs are a high-yield rote-memory area: depend ON, interested IN, married TO, good AT, afraid OF, capable OF, similar TO.
Prepositions of time: 'at' for precise times, 'on' for days/dates, 'in' for months/years/longer periods.
Correlative conjunctions must match in structure (parallelism): either...or, neither...nor, not only...but also, both...and.
Subordinating conjunctions (although, because, since, unless) introduce dependent clauses; coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) join independent clauses.

Learn vocabulary in word families/roots rather than isolated words — recognising a common Latin/Greek root (e.g. 'bene-' = good, 'mal-' = bad) lets you infer meaning under exam pressure.
For synonym/antonym MCQs, first identify the part of speech and the word's likely context/tone (positive, negative, neutral) before matching options — this eliminates half the choices quickly.
Build a running list of idioms and one-word substitutions from past papers rather than a generic dictionary list — MDCAT tends to reuse a recognisable pool of items.
Watch for 'false friend' options: words that look similar to the correct answer but have a different or opposite meaning — a very common distractor technique.
Practising with short daily vocabulary sets (10–15 words) retains far better than cramming long lists once.

Subject–verb agreement errors are the single most common error type — check the true grammatical subject, not the noun physically closest to the verb.
Parallelism errors occur when list items or compared items don't share the same grammatical form ('I like reading, writing, and to swim' is wrong — should be 'and swimming').
Redundancy: eliminate phrases that repeat meaning unnecessarily ('return back', 'the reason is because').
Misplaced/dangling modifiers: a descriptive phrase must sit next to the word it actually modifies, or the sentence implies something illogical.
Read the whole sentence first before selecting an underlined correction — errors are sometimes only obvious in relation to the rest of the sentence.
When multiple options look grammatically valid, choose the most concise, standard-English option — MDCAT favours clarity over stylistic flourish.

Skim the passage first for overall structure and main idea before reading questions in detail — don't try to memorise every fact on the first pass.
Read the questions before re-reading the passage in full, so you know exactly what to look for.
Answer strictly from the passage's content and logic — never rely on outside general knowledge, even if you know more about the topic.
For 'main idea' questions, the answer usually reflects the passage as a whole, not just one paragraph or a minor detail.
For inference questions, the correct answer is strongly implied but not directly stated — eliminate options that are either too literal (directly quoted, but for a different question type) or too big a leap beyond the text.
Manage time strictly: with English carrying only a small share of total marks, don't over-invest time on any single comprehension passage at the expense of other subjects.