SAT Grammer

New SAT Writing Section: What’s Inside

The New SATs have quite a few grammar rules.  The first rule to remember is the Subject-verb agreement rule. This is the most basic rule and can be counted among the basic but vital rules/concepts tested on the SAT.

Rule 1: The subject and verb must agree in number.

For example:

Tony likes to drink coffee.

Tony and Mike like to play football.

In the first sentence, we have a singular subject, ‘Tony,’ that agrees with the verb ‘likes.’

The second sentence has a plural compound subject, so the verb is like (without an ‘S’ and so also plural)

Let’s consider the following sentence:

Everyone believes that their way of doing things is best.

The above sentence does not sound bizarre; however, we must follow the rules in the test because words such as everyone, anyone, everybody, anybody, and each are singular. These are cases when we address individuals in a group. Hence, in the above example, the pronoun ‘their,’ which is plural, does not agree with the singular subject ‘everyone.’

The correct sentence would look like this:

Everyone believes that his or her way of doing things is best.

So, you need to remember to use the rules and not your ears to find the mistake in the New Sat writing section.

Rule 2: Subject and verb can be separated by a phrase, clause, or modifier.

In this case, the punctuation rule is to use commas or dashes on either side of the phrase or modifier.

Look at the example below:

Tony, who is from Russia, likes to drink coffee.

In the above sentence, the modifier is the extra or additional information between the commas. ‘Tony’ is the subject, and ‘likes’ is the verb in the sentence. Therefore, when you read a sentence, remember to pick out the subject and the verb to figure out the error in the sentence.

Option Training Institute, Dubai, focuses on training students with the most significant grammar rules and tips to get a better score in the New SAT. But the interesting thing is that the training does not limit itself to just the basics, which most trainers find easy to teach in a class. Trainers at Option take the training to the next level of inquiry and ensure that, along with basics, students achieve a high level of competence in complicated structures that they can skillfully deploy in their essay writing task.

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