Knowledge of Language
What the test rewards
Knowledge of Language questions ask whether a sentence is clear, concise, and appropriate for its audience and purpose. You need to recognize redundancy, wordiness, vague wording, misplaced modifiers, ambiguous pronouns, inconsistent tone, and faulty parallelism. You also need to choose effective transitions and combine sentences without changing meaning.
Traps to expect
Wordiness is the most frequent trap. Phrases like due to the fact that, in the event that, and at this point in time can usually become because, if, and now. Redundancy appears in expressions such as ATM machine or advance planning. Watch for double negatives and for answer choices that are grammatically correct but shift tone-slang in a formal report, or stiff jargon in a friendly notice. Ambiguous pronouns (he told his brother that he was late) need a clear noun. Misplaced modifiers often begin with a participle: Walking to the store, the rain began wrongly suggests the rain was walking. Prefer active voice unless the actor is unknown or unimportant, and keep parallel items in the same grammatical form.
Worked example
Original: “Due to the fact that the meeting was canceled, we were unable to discuss the budget.” Revised: “Because the meeting was canceled, we could not discuss the budget.” The revision removes four words, keeps the cause–effect relationship, and preserves a neutral, formal tone.
Rule of thumb
Choose the shortest version that keeps the original meaning and the intended tone. If an answer adds words without adding information, it is probably wrong. Read the whole sentence after substituting your choice to catch meaning shifts.