English Language Skills
This domain is tested through multiple-choice items on grammar, usage, and writing conventions, and it also underlies the scored writing task. The tested ideas are stable: sentence completeness, agreement, modification, parallelism, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and clarity.
Sentence completeness and joining
- Fragments lack a subject, a verb, or a complete thought ("Because the bell rang."). Run-ons fuse two independent clauses with no punctuation; comma splices join them with a comma alone.
- Repair with a period, a semicolon, or a comma plus a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).
- Conjunctive adverbs (however, therefore) take a semicolon before and a comma after: "Scores rose; however, attendance fell."
- A colon follows a complete sentence: "She packed three things: a pen, a map, and a snack."
Agreement and reference
- Ignore interrupting phrases: "The box of pencils is on the shelf." Indefinite pronouns such as each, either, and everyone are singular; collective nouns are singular unless members act individually.
- Pronoun-antecedent agreement depends on the antecedent's number and gender; keep person consistent (do not slide from one to you).
- Case: who is a subject, whom an object; "between you and me"; a comparison supplies the omitted verb ("taller than I am").
Modifiers and parallelism
- An introductory participle modifies the subject of the main clause: "Walking to the bus, the students got soaked," not "the rain soaked the students."
- Keep list items in matching form: "reading, writing, and solving problems," not "reading, writing, and to solve."
- Place only next to the word it limits; misplaced only changes the meaning.
Punctuation and mechanics
- Commas set off nonrestrictive clauses (extra information) but not restrictive ones that identify the noun. Apostrophes: singular possessive adds -'s, plural possessive adds -s'.
- Capitalize proper nouns, languages, and course titles but not seasons or compass directions used generally (go south, but South Florida).
Worked example
"Having finished the experiment; the students cleaned the lab." The semicolon is wrong because it must join two independent clauses; the participle phrase is dependent, so a comma is required instead. Reasoning: test each side for a subject and verb before choosing a semicolon.
Traps
- Fixing a comma splice with another comma.
- Using which in a restrictive clause that needs that.
- Trusting spell-check with homophones: affect/effect, principal/principle, complement/compliment.
- Setting off a restrictive clause with commas.