Grammar and Sentence Structure: Tense, Voice, Agreement, Clauses, and Word Order
What this domain tests
Grammar questions check tense and aspect, active and passive voice, subject-verb agreement, clause construction, and word order. Formats include sentence completion, error identification, and sentence reordering.
Core rules
- Tense/aspect: present perfect links a past action to a present result; past perfect marks an earlier past action; by the time + past event often requires past perfect for the earlier action. Progressive forms stress temporary or ongoing activity.
- Voice: passive = be + past participle, keeping the original tense. Use it when the doer is unknown or unimportant, and only with transitive verbs.
- Agreement: find the true subject, not the nearest noun. Each, every, everyone take singular verbs; collective nouns usually take singular verbs in academic English.
- Clauses: relative pronouns depend on the noun's role; that is common in defining clauses, which in non-defining clauses after a comma. Indirect questions use statement order.
- Word order: place adverbs according to type; after negative adverbials (never, rarely, not only) use inversion.
Worked example
Sentence: By the time the results ___ , most students ___ . Answer: were announced / had left. Reasoning: the results are announced (passive), and results is plural, so were announced. The students left before that past moment, so the earlier action takes past perfect: had left.
Traps
Using present tense after since with a finished time; letting a long subject hide the verb; dangling modifiers; despite + noun versus although + clause; double comparatives.