Grammar and Sentence Structure
Grammar and Sentence Structure tests control: whether a sentence is not only understandable but correctly formed and clearly attached to its neighbours. Expect error identification, sentence completion, transformation (active to passive, direct to reported speech), clause joining, and choosing between confusable structures.
High-yield rules
- Agreement. The verb agrees with the head noun, not the nearest one: The list of items was long. Collective nouns take a singular verb in British usage (the team is), plural when members act individually.
- Tense and aspect. Past perfect marks the earlier of two past events; present perfect links a past action to present relevance; will predicts, going to signals intention or visible evidence.
- Conditionals. If I were for unreal present, If I had known, I would have... for unreal past. Never put would have in the if-clause.
- Relative clauses. That introduces defining clauses; which introduces non-defining clauses set off by commas. Never use which for a person.
- Parallelism. Items in a list share grammatical form: reading, writing and speaking, not reading, writing and to speak.
- Modifier placement. A participle opening a sentence must describe the subject of the main clause.
Worked example
Walking into the laboratory, the equipment had already been calibrated.
The opening participle walking has no subject of its own, so readers attach it to the nearest noun - the equipment, which is absurd. Repair by supplying a human subject in the main clause: Walking into the laboratory, she found that the equipment had already been calibrated.
Traps that cost marks
- Comma splices: two finite clauses joined only by a comma. Use a full stop, a semicolon, or a conjunction.
- A long phrase between subject and verb: The number of applications, which rose sharply, was higher than expected.
- Between you and I - prepositions take the object form, me.
- Misplaced only, even and almost, which shift meaning: She only emailed the file vs She emailed only the file.
- Faulty comparison: His results were better than his colleague needs his colleague's.
- Reported speech backshift: She said she had finished, not she has finished.