Grammar and Structure
What this section tests
Grammar and Structure tests control of form at sentence level. Core concepts: tense and aspect (simple, perfect, continuous and their combinations), subject-verb agreement (including collective nouns and intervening phrases), articles and determiners, prepositions and dependent prepositions, conditionals and unreal past, passive voice, relative clauses (defining versus non-defining), reported speech, and parallel structure.
Traps to expect
- Interrupted agreement: "The list of items was long" - the verb agrees with list, not items.
- Time-marker mismatch: since requires perfect aspect ("has worked here since 2019"), by the time often triggers past perfect.
- Conditional confusion: "If I had known, I would have called" - mixing second and third conditional forms is wrong.
- Relative pronoun choice: whose for possession, where for place, which for things in non-defining clauses.
- Parallelism: "She likes swimming, cycling, and to run" is faulty; use running.
Worked example
"By the time the guests arrived, the chef ___ (prepare) the meal." The preparation finished before the arrival, so past perfect is required: had prepared. "Prepared" suggests simultaneous action; "has prepared" wrongly links to the present.
Rule of thumb
Find the verb, then find its true subject. Cross out prepositional phrases between them. For tense items, locate the time anchor (since, by, already, yesterday) first - it usually determines the answer before you read the options.
Practice habit
Keep an error log of the three grammar points you miss most, and rewrite each corrected sentence from memory.