SAT Prep | Mastering Usage Questions: Step-by-Step
In all likelihood, you’ll find that the Usage questions cover familiar territory. They’ll test your ability to identify typical writing errors, the kind that your English teachers have been warning you about for years. The Basic Verbal Skills Review included in this book offers a concise but thorough review of standard written English usage. If you have the time, work systematically through the review and complete the drill exercises.
But if you’re pressed for time, don’t despair. The Usage questions, for the most part, focus on the relatively small number of error types that many writers—even proficient ones—are prone to committing. In this chapter, we will cover the most common types of errors you’ll encounter in the Writing section.
STEP 1
Listen for an error. Even if you lack confidence in your knowledge of grammar, you probably know enough to “hear” most errors as you encounter them.
STEP 2
Having identified the part of the sentence that seems incorrect, try to determine what makes that part wrong, and then replace the underlined error with the correct word or phrase. Doing so will help you to test your intuition.
STEP 3
If you do not “hear” anything wrong with the sentence, it may be error-free. Nevertheless, mentally review the kinds of errors you are told to expect and apply them to the underlined parts of the sentence. If you see evidence of a given type of error, apply STEP 2 to that part of the sentence.
USAGE QUESTION FORMAT
Each usage question will consist of a sentence that may or may not contain an error. Choose the underlined part that contains the error or select “No error.” Be sure to read the sentence exactly as it is written:
| Some people | fail | to realize | that regular dental cleaning, accompanied by a thorough |
| A | B |
| exam, | are | essential to avoid | more | serious complications later. | No error. |
| C | D | E |
STEP 1
As you read the preceding sample questions, you may have “heard” something wrong with “are” (choice C). When a verb such as “are” doesn’t sound right, the cause is almost always noun-verb disagreement. In other words, the verb doesn’t agree with the subject in number.
STEP 2
The reason “are” sounds wrong is that the subject of the sentence, “dental cleaning,” is singular, not plural. To agree with this singular subject, the form of the verb “to be” must be present singular, “is.”
STEP 3
If you didn’t hear the error in the sample question, it’s probably because you didn’t “hear” that the subject of the sentence is singular. After all, the phrase “accompanied by a thorough exam” follows the subject, creating the impression that both “dental cleaning and exam are the subject—in other words, a compound (and therefore plural) subject. But the phrase mentioning “exam” only modifies the subject; it is not a part of it.
