German grammar rules cheat sheet plus#

For instance: The girls run back to the apartment. Without that added s, those verbs become plural. Singular verbs often have an s added on their ends.

Read the following sentence aloud and see if you can hear the error: The girls runs back to the apartment.ĭoesn’t that sound clunky and too heavy on the slithery s-sounds? That’s because the plural subject (“girls”) does not agree with the singular verb (“runs”). The subject of a sentence must always match the number of its verb. No SAT grammar rules cheat sheet is complete without mentioning subject/verb agreement. This sentence fragment makes no sense since “becomes” is a verb that requires more information to create a complete thought. In such a sentence fragment, there is only a subject and verb, which fails to create a complete thought. Instead, the example should either include Michael as the subject of the latter sentence or simply make one sentence out of the two by erasing the period in the middle.Īn incomplete verb can also create a sentence fragment. The second sentence in this example is a sentence fragment since it does not reference its subject - in this case, Michael. Our top SAT grammar tip is to identify a sentence that has no subject, like the following: Michael took a flight to London. There are a couple of ways to mistakenly create a sentence fragment. A sentence fragment is an incomplete thought represented as a single sentence. Avoid Sentence FragmentsĮach sentence must at least communicate a single complete thought. The entire narrative should remain consistent in its verb tense, like so: I take Dalia to the pub. This example depicts a singular chain of events, yet one sentence is written in present tense while the other is in past tense. For example, the following shift in verb tense is unneeded: I take Dalia to the pub. Verbs that shift from one tense to another for no discernable reason can confuse a reader. The word “team” agrees with the singular “its” because the team is considered a group. Running with this rule, the following sentence is grammatically correct: The team won its first game of the season. It’s also important to note that a collection noun like “team” can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members of said team are considered individuals or a group unit. Now, the singular and feminine Julia agrees with its antecedent, the singular and feminine “she.” A correct form of the sentence may read: If Julia wants to keep healthy, she should eat broccoli. While “Julia” is singular and female, “they” is plural and neutral. The error in the above sentence lies in the word “they” (pronoun) and the name “Julia” (antecedent). The SATs will try to trick you with this commonly used grammatically incorrect sentence: If Julia wants to keep healthy, they should eat broccoli. The same applies to the more informal “He’s” and “She’s.” Here’s an easy representation of that rule inconsistency:Ī pronoun must agree with its antecedent in both number and gender. In the context of the word “It,” an apostrophe followed by an s indicates a contraction. The following personal pronouns are all possessive: You must keep in mind that the rule regarding possessive and plural nouns is switched in the context of personal pronouns. However, the English language is infamously inconsistent, and the SAT questions will try to use that inconsistency to trick you.

German grammar rules cheat sheet plus#

This SAT grammar rule seems simple: an apostrophe plus an s (or a lone apostrophe) at the end of a noun indicates a possessive noun, while a lonely s at the end of a noun signifies a plural noun. The confusion between possessive and plural words will certainly be found all over the writing and language portion of the SAT. The grammatical error of a misplaced apostrophe may be the easiest punctuation blunder to make. Let’s kick off our SAT grammar rules cheat sheet with possessive versus plural nouns.