5. Consider that there may be nothing wrong with the sentence.
Remember that not every sentence will contain an error. If you’ve considered all the underlined portions of the sentence and you haven’t found one that has an error, then mark (E) and go on to the next question.
Don’t forget that (E) will be the right answer as frequently, or infrequently, as it would in any other section; the SAT distributes correct answers randomly in every section. For more on that, see the discussion of SAT Misconception 6 in the section of this book called “8 Things You Thought You Knew About The SAT Are Wrong.”
6. Re-read the sentence and mark your answer.
Re-read the entire sentence to double-check yourself, and then mark the answer you think is right and move on.
Conclusion
We’ve just seen an entire approach to the Identifying Sentence Errors portion of the SAT Writing Section. Now, to show you that the process works, and to help you build up your instincts for the Identifying Sentence Errors questions, we’ll try it out against actual SAT questions published by the College Board in the Blue Book. Let’s get started!
The Step-By-Step Approach To Identifying SAT Sentence Errors In Action
Now we’ll try our hand at some real SAT questions from the Blue Book, which is the College Board publication The Official SAT Study Guide. As you follow along with these explanations, remember that the goal is to build up your instincts for handling these kinds of questions.
Page 409, Question 12
(C) is wrong because two people can’t become one thing. A correct form would be “entomologists.” The College Board’s favorite issue to test, broadly speaking, is the difference between singular and plural phrases, so this is the kind of thing we want to get used to looking out for.
Page 409, Question 13
Nothing is grammatically wrong with this sentence, so (E) is the answer.
Page 409, Question 14
(A) is wrong because the form “badly” makes it sound like the casserole is doing a bad job of smelling—that is, it makes it sound like the casserole has a nose and isn’t using that nose very well. A correct form would be “surprisingly bad.” The College Board sometimes tests the difference between adjectives and adverbs, so whenever we see an adjective or an adverb underlined we have to make sure it’s the appropriate form. (For a thorough explanation of the difference between adjectives and adverbs, check out the Writing Toolbox in the appendix of this book.)
Page 409, Question 15
(C) doesn’t work because the word “whenever” indicates that the verb “learned” and the verb in (C) need to be the same tense. A correct form for (C) would be “sought out” or “would seek out.” Remember that we can only say a verb tense is wrong when the given tense makes the sentence logically impossible, as it does here.
Page 409, Question 16
(D) is wrong because in a situation like this we would have to say “thought it wise to suppress.”
Page 409, Question 17
(C) is the grammatical flaw in this sentence because it needs to be an adverbial form, because it’s modifying the verb “has risen.” A correct form would be “noticeably.” This is basically the same issue we just saw in question 14 from this page, except that in 14 the adverb needed to be an adjective, and in this question the adjective needs to be an adverb.
Page 409, Question 18
(A) needs to be “nor,” to match “neither.” The issues of “neither + nor” and “either + or” are probably the most basic and easily identified issues on the entire SAT, but for some reason test-takers miss them frequently, usually because they don’t read the question carefully enough. This is just one more example of how important it is to read EVERYTHING carefully.
Page 409, Question 19
(C) is wrong because “his or her” needs to be “their” in order to match the plural “passengers.” Again, the single most frequently tested issue is the difference between singular and plural phrases, and it’s something we always have to look out for.
Page 410, Question 20
Nothing is grammatically wrong with this, so (E) is the correct answer. Some students like to choose (B) because they think “or older” should be “and older,” but a single person can’t be both 65 and older than 65; he can only be either 65 or older, so (B) is okay the way it is.
Page 410, Question 21
This one contains a bad comparison: on the SAT, we either have to compare painters to painters or we have to compare paintings to paintings. We can’t compare paintings to painters. So a correct form for choice (B) might be “to the paintings of Rauschenberg.” Whenever you see a question on the Writing section of the SAT that involves comparing two things, you should check to make sure the two things are of the same type.