English Language Skills: Usage, Sentence Structure, and Conventions
What is tested
This domain checks whether you can recognize and fix errors in standard written English. Expect items on sentence completeness (fragments, run-ons, comma splices), subject-verb agreement, pronoun case and agreement, verb tense and form, modifier placement (dangling and misplaced), parallelism, logical comparisons, punctuation (commas, semicolons, colons, apostrophes), capitalization, spelling and homophones, and idioms.
Traps that appear in questions
Long prepositional phrases hide the real subject, so agreement errors slip past the ear. Words such as each, every, either, and nobody are singular; collective nouns (team, committee) usually take singular verbs. Watch for "between you and I" (should be "between you and me"), for a participle that modifies the wrong noun ("Walking to class, the rain began"), for tense shifts inside one sentence, and for comparisons that omit the right group ("better than any student" versus "better than any other student"). Comma splices join two full sentences with only a comma; semicolons and periods are the fixes. Common spelling confusions include its/it's, their/there/they're, affect/effect, fewer/less, and lay/lie.
Rule of thumb
Read the entire sentence before looking at the choices. Locate the subject and verb, mentally cross out prepositional phrases between them, and confirm that your chosen correction leaves one complete sentence with the original meaning intact. Do not pick an answer merely because it sounds more formal.
Worked example
"The collection of rare coins (was/were) donated to the museum last spring." Cross out "of rare coins": the subject is the singular noun collection, so the verb is was. The nearby plural coins is the distraction.