Grammar Question Type

The Writing and Language Test is the second section on the SAT. The Writing and Language test is like proofreading passages wherein you look for mistakes and correct them by selecting one of the answer choices that is given.   There are four question types under it. They are: Grammar Question Word-usage question Passage structure based question Graph Interpretation question We will go through the Grammar question type in detail with the help of an example. A typical Writing and Language passage looks like this – Greek yogurt—a strained form of cultured yogurt— 1have grown enormously in popularity in the United States since it was first introduced in the country in the late 1980s. From 2011 to 2012 alone, sales of Greek yogurt in the US increased by 50 percent. The resulting 2increases in Greek yogurt production has forced those involved in the business to address the detrimental effects that the yogurt-making process may be having on the environment. Fortunately, farmers and others in the Greek yogurt business have 3founded many methods of controlling and 4to eliminate most environmental threats. And a typical Grammar question looks like this.   Q1. A) NO CHANGE B) has grown Related articles # Inequalities 0 661 # Coordinate Geometry 0 1068 #SAT Writing And Language Word- Usage Question Type 0 1162 #SAT Writing And Language Passage Structure Based Question Type 0 2847 # Graph Interpretation Question Type 0 1194 C) had grown D) grew Q2. A) NO CHANGE B) increment -->C) increase D) rises Q3. A) NO CHANGE B) final C) found D) tried to find Q4. A) NO CHANGE B) eliminating C) eliminated D) have eliminated If you look at the SAT passage above, the part that has to be corrected is numbered and the words beside the number are underlined. The question is also marked by numbers. You must take care to refer to the right question number with the right part of the passage. This is fairly simple and very clearly given on the exam as you can see above. The grammar question type tests your understanding on the basics of grammar. Let me quickly give you’ll an overview of the important topics of grammar. The first topic we will cover are parts of speech. There are seven parts of speech and you all must be familiar with these. They are as follows: 1.Nouns are naming words. Everything that you see around has a name assigned to it. Like this laptop or computer that your using to watch this video. Laptop is a noun. Nouns can be names of people (Ram, Heena, Tabish), places (India, Canada), animals (tiger, cow), things (pencil, table), qualities like kind helpful rude etc and ideas. There are several types of nouns: Common nouns are names used to denote non-specific things like boy, town, factory, river etc. Proper nouns are used to denote specific names of people, places and things. It is easy to distinguish a proper noun as all of them start with a capital letter. Example, India, Leah, Canada, Ford, Hyundai etc. Countable noun as the name suggests are nouns that can be counted. Countable nouns can have a singular and a plural form. Non-countable nouns cannot be counted and always take a singular form. Collective nouns are names for groups of people, animals or things. They usually take on a singular form as they are considered a single unit. Even though one can count the number of the things that make up the group, it’s still considered as uncountable and a single unit.   Possessive nouns are used to show a relationship of belonging between two things or between people and things. For singular possessive nouns add ‘s’ at the end of the word and for plural possessive nouns add a apostrophe s. Example, Tisha’s laptop. QS LEAPS’ SAT videos. 2. A pronoun is a word or a phrase used to replace a noun or a noun phrase. Noun phrase comprises of a noun and words that modify the noun. Some common pronouns include he, she, them, their, which, that, etc. Singular pronouns replace singular nouns. Some of them seem plural but are singular E.g. anybody, anything, each, either, everyone, everybody, nobody, etc. Plural pronouns replace plural nouns. Examples include we, us, they, them etc. Singular pronouns must have a singular verb. And like wise plural pronouns must have plural verbs. Relative pronouns are used to connect a clause or a phrase. The most common relative pronouns used are who, whom, whose, which, whoever, whomever, whichever, that, etc. 3. Adjectives are words used to describe or modify other nouns or pronouns. Adjectives help quantifying, identifying or describing words. There is a possibility for some words to act as a noun, an adjective or a verb, depending on how it is used in a sentence. Comparative adjectives are words used to compare two things. While superlative adjectives are used to compare three or more nouns. The comparison expresses the extreme or highest degree. 4. Verbs are action words. Every sentence however big or small will surely have a verb. Some verbs are not action oriented, rather they give an idea of a state of being. Example, be, belong, seem, exist etc. Verbs can be helping verbs and main verbs. Helping verbs are words that help in making sense out of a sentence. Helping verbs need main verbs to form a meaningful sentence. Main verbs can be used independently to make sense. The way in which a verb is used is called voice. There are two types of voices, active and passive. A verb is said to be active when the subject of the verb is doing an action. E.g. I drank the water. The subject of the verb is I who is performing the action of drinking. A verb is passive when the subject undergoes an action. E.g. The water was drank by me. The subject me underwent the action of drinking. 5. Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. Adverbs indicate manner, time, place, cause or degree. They answer questions like how, when, where, etc. 6. Prepositions are words that link nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence. Prepositions are bound together with their object which are the nouns and/or the pronouns of a sentence which then form prepositional phrases. Examples of prepositions include in, of, about, above, below, under, by, to, with, over, etc. One rule to remember about prepositions is that they are always followed by a noun. Prepositions are not followed by a verb, if that does happen then it’s the -ing form of the verb that follows the preposition. In that case the verb is a gerund which is the noun form of a verb. 7. Conjunction are connecting words used to join words, phrases and clauses. There are three types of conjunctions: Co-ordinating conjunctions which are used to join individual words, phrases and independent clauses. Examples include for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. Second one is the subordinating conjunctions which are used to introduce a dependent clause and help us indicate the relationship between the independent clause and the dependent clause. Example include After, although, as, because, before, etc. Third one is the Conjunctive Adverbs which indicate relationships like contrast, cause effect, comparison etc. Examples include however, therefore, thus, moreover etc. Now let’s go through the five parts of a sentence. They are as follows: The subject is usually the noun or pronoun of the sentence, it is the person or thing that carries out the action in a sentence. In other words the subject performs the verb in a sentence. The object can be direct or indirect. The person or thing upon which the action is carried out is called the direct object. The recipient of the action is called the indirect object. Not all sentences have an indirect object. Phrases are groups of words that either have a subject or a verb missing. They do not make complete sense when used by itself. Example, lady in red, wear blue shoes, two beautiful kittens etc. Clauses are sentences that have a verb and a subject. They can be independent or dependent. Independent clauses are groups of words that have a subject and a verb. When used by itself, they form complete meaning.   Dependent clauses are groups of words that do not form meaning by itself, they need to be attached or included within an independent clause. Dependent clauses are always introduced either by a subordinating conjunction (like although, because etc) or a relative pronoun (like who, whom, that etc). Punctuation that the SAT tests you on include comma, semi colon (;), colon (:), and dash (-). Comma is used to separate non-restrictive modifiers and lists. Non-restrictive modifiers are words, phrases or clauses that follow a noun and are not essential to identify a noun or form meaning of a sentence. Hence, they are placed within commas as they give us some extra information about a noun but if this information is not there it does not have an impact on the overall meaning of the sentence. Semicolon is used to connect two independent clauses. When there is more than one independent clause in a sentence, it can be separated by a semicolon. But when there is a conjunction between two independent clauses then we need to use a comma. Using a semi-colon in such a case would be incorrect. E.g. Some people are used to typing; other people prefer writing. Colon is used to introduce a list and to introduce an explanation or an example. This is how a sentence with a colon looks like. I need to pick up a few things from the grocery store: fruits, vegetables, chocolates, and milk. Dash is used to separate modifiers from the rest of the sentence, to introduce a list or an explanation. Example, the bag is available in three colours – black, blue and brown. Varanasi-the land of Shiva – is famous for river Ganges. The SAT tests your knowledge on the above topics of grammar. There will be grammatical errors that you will come across in the passages; your task is to correct those errors by selecting the best answer among the four options that are given. While answering grammar questions you should just read the lines that are under question and a few lines before and after the part of the passage that you are looking at answering. Grammar questions do not need contextual information to be answered. Following are the steps that you can adopt while approaching a Grammar Question: Step 1: Read the passage actively and quickly to understand the topic, point and purpose of the passage. Step 2: Then read the question to understand what type of question it is that you are going to answer.   Once you determine it’s a Grammar question look at the question number, match it with the right part of the passage. Step 3: Read few lines before and after the part that is in question. Step 4: Determine if the sentence is written correctly. If not, it means answer choice A is eliminated. Step 5: Go through the other three answer choices and select the one which is the most appropriate. Let’s solve a grammar question by applying the above steps. Step 1: Read the passage actively and quickly to understand the topic, point and purpose of the passage. A Life in Traffic A subway system is expanded to provide service to a growing suburb. A bike-sharing program is adopted to encourage nonmotorized transportation.  1  To alleviate rush hour traffic jams in a congested downtown area, stoplight timing is coordinated.  When any one of these changes  2  occur, it is  likely the result of careful analysis conducted by transportation planners. The work of transportation planners generally includes evaluating current transportation needs, assessing the effectiveness of existing facilities, and improving those facilities or  3  they design  new ones. Most transportation planners work in or near cities,  4  but some are employed in rural areas.  Say, for example, a large factory is built on the outskirts of a small town. Traffic to and from that location would increase at the beginning and end of work shifts. The transportation  5  planner’s job,  might involve conducting a traffic count to determine the daily number of vehicles traveling on the road to the new factory. If analysis of the traffic count indicates that there is more traffic than the  6  current road as it is designed at this time  can efficiently accommodate, the transportation planner might recommend widening the road to add another lane. As the title suggests the passage is about A life in traffic. It furthers tells us about transportation, its planners and the plans that the transportation planners are devising to deal with the traffic. Step 2: Then read the question to understand what type of question it is that you are going to answer.   Once you determine it’s a Grammar question look at the question number, match it with the right part of the passage. Grammar questions do not have an explicit question mentioned, you will only see the number and by looking at the options you can say it’s a grammar question, as grammar questions will either test you on punctuation or a different form of the same word. For example, in the above passage the word in question is ‘they design’. The answer choices given are: to design, designing and design. You can say it’s a grammar question because the options have given different forms of the same word design. Do not get confused if you see a question like the one below, there is no question! You must remember the question is implied, that you should select the best option for the underlined part in question. Select an Answer 3. A. NO CHANGE B. to design C. designing D. design In this passage, we have to refer to the part where 3 is written. I have highlighted the part in yellow but this will not be the case on the SAT. The work of transportation planners generally includes evaluating current transportation needs, assessing the effectiveness of existing facilities, and improving those facilities or  3  they design  new ones. Most transportation planners work in or near cities,  4  but some are employed in rural areas.   Step 3: Read few lines before and after the part that is in question. Read the above passage. Step 4: Determine if the sentence is written correctly. If not, it means answer choice A is eliminated. If you notice the sentence is not written correctly. The first line is using words in the gerund form like assessing, existing and improving. So the word design should also be in the gerund form i.e. designing. This is called a parallel structure. Parallelism is the use of successive verbal constructions used in a sentence to create a rhythm and flow. Parallel structures use repetitive words or phrases to make the sentence persuasive and grammatically correct. Step 5: Go through the other three answer choices and select the one which is the most appropriate. Now we are left with answer choices B, C, and D. Among the three answer choices, C has the word designing which matches our guess and creates a parallel structure. The usage of ‘to design’ and ‘design’ does not form a parallel structure and hence are incorrect. B. to design C. designing D. design