Language and Grammar: Agreement, Punctuation and Register
The Language and Grammar domain tests your control of standard English in context: tense and agreement, sentence structure, punctuation, word choice, register and sentence transformation. Questions often ask you to identify an error, correct a sentence, combine clauses or rewrite a sentence without changing its meaning.
Agreement and tense
- Find the head noun and ignore prepositional phrases: The list of items ... was.
- With neither ... nor and either ... or, the verb agrees with the nearer subject: Neither the teacher nor the students were ready.
- A collective noun takes a singular verb when it acts as one unit: The committee has decided.
- Keep tense sequence; use the past perfect for an action completed before another past action.
Sentences and punctuation
- A fragment lacks a main clause; a run-on joins main clauses without correct punctuation.
- A comma splice uses only a comma between two main clauses. Use a full stop, semicolon or conjunction.
- Apostrophes mark possession (the students' work) or contraction (it's); its is possessive.
- In direct speech, punctuation belongs inside the quotation marks.
Register
Formal writing avoids contractions, slang and vague phrasal verbs; use complete verbs and precise vocabulary.
Worked example
The list of items, including the books and the maps, were left on the table. Error: were agrees with the nearest nouns (books, maps), not the subject. The head noun is list, so use was. The phrase including the books and the maps is parenthetical and set off by commas. Corrected: The list of items, including the books and the maps, was left on the table.
Traps that cost marks
- Proximity agreement: letting a nearby plural noun control the verb.
- Writing would of for would have.
- Using a comma splice where a semicolon is needed.
- Putting apostrophes in ordinary plurals.
- Changing the meaning during sentence transformation.