Grammar and Language Usage
What the domain tests
Grammar and Language Usage tests your control of sentence-level accuracy: tense and time, subject-verb agreement, articles and prepositions, conjunctions, active and passive voice, reported speech, conditionals, degrees of comparison, question tags, non-finite verbs, and editing or sentence transformation. Questions are often in context, so read the whole sentence before choosing a form.
Core rules and concepts
- Find the real subject before checking agreement. Phrases such as 'along with', 'as well as', and 'one of the' do not change the number of the headword.
- Use time markers to choose tense. 'Since' and 'for' need a present perfect or present perfect continuous in a current-time sentence.
- In passive transformation, the object of the active sentence becomes the subject; keep the original tense and use the correct form of 'be' plus past participle.
- In reported speech, shift tense back one step when the reporting verb is past; change pronouns, and adjust time and place words ('now' to 'then', 'here' to 'there').
- Use 'a' or 'an' by sound, not spelling: 'an hour', 'a university'.
- In editing, read the full line; the error may be a missing word, an extra word, or a wrong form.
Worked example
Sentence: 'One of the boys were absent yesterday.' Reasoning: The headword is 'One', which is singular. 'Of the boys' is a prepositional phrase and does not control the verb. The past time marker 'yesterday' confirms past tense, and the singular past form is 'was'. Correction: 'One of the boys was absent yesterday.'
Traps that cost marks
- Proximity agreement: letting the nearest plural noun control the verb.
- Double negatives and wrong question tags ('didn't he?' after 'he went').
- Using 'if' for 'whether' in indirect questions.
- Changing meaning in transformation, especially when turning a question into a statement.
- Forgetting the auxiliary in passive or reported forms.