SAT WRITING WORKBOOK

PART V

THE HEART OF THE TEST: MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS

In this section of the SAT, you are given eighteen sentences, most of which contain an error in grammar, usage, or style. Your job is to identify which underlined portion of each sentence contains the error. Some sentences have no error.

Sample Question

the two stories, the class that the was the

The sentence contains an error in comparison. When you compare two things, use words in the comparative degree, such as better, lighter, and more able. But when you compare more than two things, use words in the superlative degree, such as best, lightest, and most able. In the sentence, two stories are being compared. Therefore use better instead of best. Choice D is the right answer.

Although Identifying Sentence Errors questions are shorter and less involved than those in the sentence-improvement sections of the exam, they deal with an equally wide range of grammar and usage problems.

The sentence errors you are most likely to meet in this section of the SAT are:

Errors in Expression and Style

Faulty idiom

Faulty diction

Wordiness and redundancies

Faulty parallelism

Incomplete comparisons

Errors in Grammar and Usage

Noun–verb agreement

Pronoun–antecedent agreement

Faulty pronoun reference

Shift in pronoun person

Faulty pronoun case

Faulty verb tense

Faulty verb form