English Grammar and Usage
English Grammar and Usage
The English Grammar and Usage domain tests formal control: tense and aspect, subject–verb agreement, articles and prepositions, conditionals, relative clauses, comparatives, and modal meaning. Items are usually single sentences with one blank or one underlined segment to correct.
Core rules
- Locate the finite verb and its real subject; ignore prepositional phrases and relative clauses between them.
- Use time markers to fix tense: by the time + past point often requires past perfect for the earlier action.
- Check parallel structure after and, or, not only … but also; list items must share grammatical form.
- For articles, decide first whether the noun is countable or uncountable, then whether it is specific.
- For modals, match meaning: must (obligation/certainty), may (possibility/permission), should (advice), could (past ability/possibility).
Worked example
Sentence: “By the time the bell rang, the students ___ their essays.” Options: finish / had finished / have finished / were finishing. Reasoning: “By the time” plus the past verb rang sets a past reference point. The essays were completed before that point, so the earlier action takes past perfect: had finished. Were finishing suggests an action still in progress at that moment and clashes with the completed sense of by the time.
Traps that cost marks
Ignoring time markers and choosing the tense that sounds natural in isolation; missing a singular subject such as each or one of; breaking parallelism after a correlative conjunction; and memorizing preposition combinations without checking the whole phrase.