Test Prep: WritingGrammar Questions

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Test Prep Writing/Grammar Questions

• College Board Prep
• Information taken from The Official SAT Study
  Guide

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SAT Types of Writing/Grammar Questions

• Identifying Sentence Errors
• Improving Sentences
• Improving Paragraphs

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Multiple Choice To guess or not to guess?

• What if I dont know the answer? Should I guess?
• Multiple choice questions
• Eliminate as many answers as possible
• Make an educated guess from the remaining ones
• ¼ point is subtracted for EACH INCORRECT answer
  on the SAT (no penalty on the ACT)
• Random guessing will not improve your score and
  could, in fact, lower it

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Approaches to Identifying Sentence Errors

• Read each sentence quickly but carefully
• Consider each questions as a cluster of T/F
  questions, each to be considered separately
• Read aloud, in your head
• Examine the underlined choices A through D
• Develop the habit of looking for the most common
  mistakes people make in grammar, punctuation,
  etc.
• Subject-Verb agreement
• Pronoun agreement
• Adjective/adverb confusions

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Approaches to Identifying Sentence Errors

• Look for errors in idioms
• Remember that some sentences DO NOT HAVE ANY
  ERRORS
• Correct errors even in questions for which you
  have only to identify the error
• Move quickly through questions about Identifying
  Sentence Errors
• Mark questions in your test booklet that youve
  skipped

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Approaches to Improving Sentences

• Read the entire sentence before you look at the
  choices
• Remember that the right answer will be the one
  CORRECT version among the five choices
• Read each answer choice along with the entire
  sentence
• Look for common problem areas in sentences
• Noun/verb agreement
• Parallelism
• Placement of modifiers
• Use of relative clauses

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Approaches to Improving Sentences

• Read more slowly than you normally do
• Use your test booklet to help you by marking each
  questions that you dont answer

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Approaches to Improving Paragraphs

• Read the essay thoroughly to determine its
  overall meaning before you look at the questions
• Read more slowly that you usually do
• Try all the suggestions before you decide on your
  answer
• Look for common issues wordiness, redundancy,
  unnecessary repetition

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Approaches to Improving Paragraphs

• Make sure that your answer about a particular
  sentence or sentences makes sense in the context
  of the preceding and following sentences and of
  the passage as a whole
• Use your test booklet to mark each questions that
  you dont answer. Then you can easily find it
  later

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