Sentence Errors

Each sentence has four underlined words or phrases, and a fifth choice, no error. You need to determine which underlined portion, if any, contains an error in grammar or usage. If the sentence is correct, you will choose answer e, no error. Approximately 25% of the multiple-choice writing questions are this type. 

You ll be given five versions of a sentence, and have to choose the one that is most clear and correct. Approximately 65% of the questions in the Writing section are Improving Sentences. 

These questions concern a passage of approximately 200 words. They ask about how to improve the passage on many levels, from large-scale organizational issues to word choice and grammar. Approximately 10% of the questions are this type. 

These multiple-choice questions are designed to test your knowledge of grammar and usage. Let s take a closer look at how they are structured, the types of errors you re most likely to encounter, and how best to approach Identifying Sentence Errors. At the end of this section, we ve included ten practice questions (answers are at the end of the chapter). 

Each sentence has four possible errors, underlined and marked a-d. There is also a choice e for no error. No sentence contains more than one error. It is your task to find the error, or choose e if the sentence is correct. You are not asked to identify, explain, or correct it. All you must do is locate it. 

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Complete sentences require a noun and verb, and express a fully developed thought. Two common sentence errors are extremes. Sentence fragments stop too quickly they are phrases that are not whole thoughts. Run-on sentences don t stop soon enough they include two or more complete clauses or sentences. 

Identifying Sentence Errors. In each question is one sentence with four words or phrases underlined. You need to determine which underlined portion, if any, contains an error. 

Once an experimental test section has been given, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) looks at the results. If most test takers get a question right, it s determined to be easy, and if most get it wrong, it s hard. The questions in each section, then, are organized from easiest to hardest. If there are fifteen sentence errors questions, five will be easy, five will be average, and five will be hard. 

Therefore, in Chapter 2, you ll find Identifying Sentence Errors first. You ll review the most common grammar and usage issues these questions test for, and... 

Multiple-choice questions are Identifying Sentence Errors, Improving Sentences, and Improving Paragraphs. 

Do all of the easiest Identifying Sentence Errors and Improving Sentences questions first. Then, complete the harder questions of those types. Finally, tackle the Improving Paragraphs questions. 

There are many possible grammar and usage errors, and of course, every type is fair game. However, most of the questions will contain just a handful of common errors. In this section, we ll review the eight you re most likely to encounter. When you know what to look for, you ll find sentence errors more easily. 

Personal pronouns have two main forms the subjective and objective cases. This simply means that we use one form when the pronoun is acting as a subject and another form when the pronoun is acting as an object. Expect to see a couple of sentence errors involving confusion of subjective and objective cases. 

Another common sentence error involves a pronoun following the word than. Because the than + (pro)noun construction requires a verb (even if that verb is not articulated), you must use the subjective form of the pronoun I am taller than he [is]. 

Since idioms are typically learned through conversation, you ll probably be able to hear idiom errors in the Identifying Sentence Errors multiple-choice questions. Listen carefully to each sentence as you read it, and identify the error. 

This question type is presented in order of difficulty. Although each question is worth just one point, the first few will be easier than the last few. If Identifying Sentence Errors appear first in your 25-minute section, don t spend too much time on the difficult ones it makes more sense to move ahead to the Improving Sentences section, where you ll again encounter the easiest questions first. 

The eight most common errors are covered in the Sentence Errors section ... 

Read each question carefully. Unlike Identifying Sentence Errors and Improving Sentences questions, the prompts and answer choices for Improving Paragraphs will vary. All will offer five choices (a-e), but choice a will not always repeat the original text... 

You re now familiar with the types of questions you will encounter. But what kinds of issues will those questions most likely deal with All of the errors that appear in Identifying Sentence Errors and Improving Sentences are fair game in Improving Paragraphs. Expect to see problems with word choice and sentence-level issues such as adjective/adverb confusion, verb tenses, faulty comparisons, and improper use of the passive voice. 

No matter the order they re presented in, answer Writing section multiple-choice questions as follows Identifying Sentence Errors, Improving Sentences, and Improving Paragraphs. 

About 20% of the Identifying Sentence Errors and Improving Sentences questions will have no error. That means for Identifying Sentence Errors questions, you ll select choice e ( no error ), and for Improving Sentences questions, you ll select choice a (same as the original sentence). 

Identifying Sentence Errors questions don t test your knowledge of spelling or punctuation, so don t waste time looking for those types of errors. 

This first section is going to see how well you can recognize a mistake in grammar or usage. It won t ask you to name or label it you just have to recognize it and know the best way to fix it. Of course, here and there, the SAT will include a question that has no mistakes, and you need to be able to spot that question type as well. You will have approximately 18 questions on identifying sentence errors, so it is important to understand how they work. 

With identifying sentence errors questions, always assume that the words and/or phrases that are NOT underlined are grammatically correct and that there is only one error. 

This section will test a lot of different grammar rules. The example you just read, for instance, tests subject-verb agreement. That is one of the 18 different things sentence errors will test you on. Here is the complete list. Please note that the ones with one asterisk ( ) appear on the SAT an average of three times or more. Those with two asterisks ( ) appear twice on average, and those with three asterisks ( ) appear once on average. 

The following are examples of the different identifying sentence errors questions that you will be tested on in the SAT. There are 114 practice questions, which means that you will know these types of questions backward, forward, and upside down ... 

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