Language Use and Grammar
Language Use and Grammar
This domain tests control of Standard English at sentence level: concord, tense and aspect, pronoun case, modifier placement, sentence completeness and punctuation. Items usually appear as a sentence with one faulty segment, or as a cloze offering four near-synonymous forms.
Core rules
- Concord is decided by the true subject, not the nearest noun. In 'The crate of ripe mangoes ___ on the step', the subject is 'crate' (singular), so 'sits'. Phrases beginning 'of', 'along with', 'as well as' and 'together with' do not change the number.
- With 'either...or' and 'neither...nor', the verb agrees with the nearer subject: 'Neither the prefects nor the principal was informed'.
- Keep tense consistent unless the timeline genuinely shifts. Reported speech normally backshifts: 'She said she had finished'.
- A pronoun after a preposition takes the object form: 'between you and me'. As a subject complement, the subject form is standard: 'It was she who called'.
- Repair fragments and run-ons. A fragment lacks a main clause; a run-on joins two main clauses with only a comma. Use a full stop, a semicolon or a coordinating conjunction.
- Place modifiers next to what they modify. 'Walking to school, the rain soaked us' dangles, because 'walking' attaches to 'the rain'.
Worked example
Item: 'Each of the students (have / has) submitted a portfolio, but neither the teacher nor the monitors (was / were) satisfied.' Reasoning: 'Each' is grammatically singular and takes 'has', despite 'students' sitting next to the verb. In the second clause, 'nor' makes the nearer subject 'monitors' govern, so 'were'. Answer: has ... were.
Traps
- Letting a plural noun between subject and verb drive the concord.
- Treating 'none', 'each', 'everybody' and 'either' as plural in formal writing.
- Splitting a subject from its verb with a comma.
- Choosing what sounds right in casual speech rather than in written Standard English.