There are many pesky little grammar rules that you’ll be tested on as part of the SAT. Therefore, it’s important to not just know these grammar rules, but also how test questions are structured .
One more IMPORTANT rule to remember: Do not use a comma before a preposition. On the SAT, a comma before a preposition is always wrong.
Wrong: The police, of the crime scene, didn’t turn up any clues.
Correct: The police of the crime scene didn’t turn up any clues.
Wrong: Andy Murray, of Great Britain, competed intensely, for the goal medal in tennis.
Correct: Andy Murray of Great Britain competed intensely for the goal medal in tennis.
You can always expect at least one idiom question on the SAT Writing and Language Test. Examples of idioms include “at the drop of the hat,” “beat around the bush,” and “in over one’s head.”
The idioms used on the SAT will always include a prepositional phrase. When it comes to idioms, trust your ear to determine the correct answer.
Here’s how you do it: take an idiom’s “non-prepositional” word(s) and use it/them in a different sentence in your head, as fast as possible. You will find that your brain generally fills in the proper preposition for you.
It’s weird how well this works. Whenever you’re suspicious of a certain prepositional phrase, use this trick to determine which preposition you pair the word with.
The list on the next page shows the most commonly used idoms - it’s not practical to memorize every single idiom on this list. However, we do recommend that you review this list periodically.
The word “everyone” conjures up a large group of people. But when you use “everyone” in a sentence, the verbs used to describe “everyone’ must be singular, and NOT plural.
Everyone is angry - not everyone are angry.
The same goes for the word ‘each’ - this is even trickier.
‘Each’ makes things singular, but since it always draws things from a crowd, it’s easy to imagine plurals when the word is used.
Wrong: Each of the band members are angry.
Correct: Each of the members of the band is angry.
The word ‘and’ is the exact opposite of the words ‘each’ and ‘everyone.’ Whenever you see the word ‘and’, you should assume that everything in the sentence is now plural.
These are much, much tougher to spot when the ‘and’ comes after the plural verb. One of the most common grammar traps looks like this:
Wrong: Part of the lecture is a talk from a notable professor and a new type of learning methodology introduced last year.
This error is incredibly tough for your brain to pick up on because it sees the short-term singular (...is a talk...) and assumes everything is okay. After all, the word ‘is’ is singular, “a talk” is singular, so it’s a match! But that’s not right.
Because ‘and’ is introduced later in the sentence, the sentence should be:
Correct: Part of the lecture are a talk from a notable professor and a new type of learning methodology introduced last year.
There are no exceptions to this rule. When you group two or more things with the word ‘and,’ regardless of whether they are individually singular or plural, the verbs used to describe them must now be plural.
Some nouns are countable, whereas others are not. If you are unsure as to whether something is countable or not, perform the counting test.
For patience: One patience (?), two patiences (?), stop. That is wrong. Patience is not countable.
Wrong: There were LESS Numidian kings than Roman emperors.
Correct: There were FEWER Numidian kings than Roman emperors.
Remember that you must use comparative forms of adjectives and adverbs (better, worse, more, less) to compare two things or people, but you must use superlative forms (best, worst, most, least) to compare three or more things or people.
On the SAT, the word ‘when’ must refer to an exact period of time, and the word ‘where’ must refer to an exact physical location. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Wrong: It was a bad incident, where nearly 70 people were injured.
Why? Because the word “where” refers to a location, but no location is mentioned.
Wrong: There’s a company that teaches people how to dance when they don’t know how to.
What time exactly am I referring to here?
Whenever you see the words ‘where’ and ‘when’ on the SAT, you should become incredibly suspicious. But, to make sure they’re being used correctly, all you need to do is ask:
When - is this referring to a precise period of time? If so, it’s good - if not, it’s wrong.
Where - is this referring to a precise location? If so, it’s good - if not, it’s wrong. ]
Occasionally, a subject may include a phrase such as “or, either... or, neither... nor”. Such phrases link two nouns. If one of the nouns is singular and the other noun is plural, what verb form should be used?
The answer is simple: find the noun nearest to the verb, and make sure that the verb agrees in number with this noun.
Correct: Neither the coach nor the players ARE going to the beach.
Correct: Neither the players nor the coach IS going to the beach.
In the first example, the plural subject “players” is nearest to the verb, so the verb takes the plural form “are.” In the second, the verb is singular due to the singular subject “coach.”
It’s okay to say “being ------ed” most of the time. But outside of these two instances, the word choice is almost always wrong.
We don’t want to get too deep into the grammatical rabbit hole here, so let’s just agree on something: If you see the word “being” in a sentence, remember it’s wrong about 99% of the time on the SAT unless used in the two exact ways mentioned above.
Rules about when to use “would” and “will” are quite broad, so it’s important to understand the difference between the two.
When to use Will - Will is used to form future simple tense, to describe something that takes place in the future and is completed in the future.
When to Use Would - Would is a past-tense form of will. If you are writing about past events, you can use would to indicate something that is/was supposed to happen.
Would is also a conditional verb. It indicates an action that would happen if certain circumstances were met.
For Example: Nissan said its new Chairman would be Mr. Saikawa, a company veteran who had served as Nissan’s CEO and had led its operations in North America.
The battle over whether to use “which” or “that” is a grammar rule many students struggle with. It’s also a popular SAT question! Use the following quick rule of thumb to get it right.
If the sentence doesn’t need the clause then use which” preceded by a comma.’ If the sentence does need the clause, use ‘that without a comma’.
These sentences are not the same, but both are correct. The first sentence tells us that you have just one office, and it’s located in Cincinnati. The clause “which has two lunchrooms” gives us additional information, but it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence. Remove the clause and the location of our one office would still be clear: Cincinnati.
The second sentence suggests that we have multiple offices and that the office with two lunchrooms is located in Cincinnati. The phrase “that has two lunchrooms” has another part of the sentence (our office) depends on it. You can’t remove that clause without changing the meaning of the sentence.
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The SAT Writing and Language Test repeatedly tests the proper usage of verb tenses. Knowing when to use different verb tenses and forms will be extremely beneficial to you on this part of the test.
The SAT Writing & language section usually tests 2-3 questions on subject-verb agreement on every test. Here we tell you all you need to know about subject-verb agreements on the SAT.
A pronoun can often be used as a substitute for a noun in a sentence. Anytime a pronoun is used in a passage, that pronoun must have a clear antecedent; that is, it must directly connect to a noun or pronoun that was mentioned before it.
Parallelism is a very strange concept. Unlike commas, semicolons, pronouns, tenses, etc., parallelism isn’t applied to just a single area of grammar – it spans all aspects of the English language.
There are many pesky little grammar rules that you’ll be tested on as part of the SAT. Therefore, it’s important to not just know these grammar rules, but also how test questions are structured .
Though sentence structures are rarely tested on the SAT, you will need to understand them to accurately answer comma-based questions.
The comma is widely used in writing and is the most commonly tested concept on the SAT Writing and Language Test. Therefore, it’s extremely important to understand how to correctly use commas and when to avoid them.
Even though comma usage is the most prominent punctuation rule tested on the SAT, other punctuation such as semicolons, colons, dashes, and apostrophes are frequently tested as well.
Modifiers are words, phrases or clauses used to describe something in a sentence. They are often tested on the SAT in the form of comma usage.
The SAT Writing and Language Test is a passage-based test. There are four multi-paragraph passages and 44 questions to go with them. The makers of the SAT break this test down into two main sections: Usage and Mechanics and Rhetorical Skills.