Grammar and Sentence Structure: Forms the Exam Reuses
Grammar and sentence-structure items ask you to choose the form that makes a sentence well formed, to reorder fragments, or to spot the error. The exam favours structures that Japanese learners typically mis-produce, so the same handful of rules reappear.
High-yield rules
- Agreement: The number of students is (singular) vs A number of students are (plural).
- Relative clauses: restrictive clauses take no comma; which can refer to a whole clause, that cannot follow a comma.
- Participles: -ing = active or simultaneous; -ed = passive or completed; having + past participle = earlier action.
- Tense: present perfect with for/since; past perfect for the earlier of two past events.
- Inversion: after a fronted negative adverbial - Not until later did he realize..., Never have I seen...
- Subjunctive: It is essential that he be informed; If I were you.
Worked example
“___ the data, the researchers concluded that the trend was real.” Options: Having analyzed / Analyzing / Analyzed / To analyze. Reasoning: the analysis happens before the conclusion, so a perfect participle is needed: Having analyzed. Analyzing would make the two actions simultaneous. Analyzed is passive and would mean the researchers were analyzed. To analyze expresses purpose, which does not fit “concluded”.
Traps
- Dangling participles: the subject of the participle must be the subject of the main clause.
- Choosing by Japanese translation rather than by English structure.
- Missing a required preposition after a verb in the passive.