The SAT Prep Black Book(142)

As we’ve seen with every other question type on the SAT, we’ll find that these questions simply recycle the same basic concepts that all other questions of the same type use.

Of course, you’ll need a copy of the Blue Book to follow along. I strongly advise you to follow along with these solutions as a way to continue to improve your instincts for answering Identifying Sentence Errors questions.





Page 471, Question 18


Many test-takers get hung up on the verb phrase in choice (A), because they wonder if it would sound better as “evaluated.” But we have to remember that it’s not our job to think about what would sound better; it’s our job to identify grammatical errors. Since “was evaluating” and “evaluated” are both in the past, even if they’re in slightly different forms, there’s no way for one form to be grammatically acceptable and the other one to be unacceptable in the context of this question.

The actual issue is something we should always be on the lookout for: the word “they” in choice (C) is plural, but it’s referring to the singular noun “tax.” Remember that the College Board will test you on the singular/plural issue more frequently than on any other single issue!





Page 472, Question 29


For a lot of test-takers, this sentence just kind of ‘feels’ like it has something wrong with it—but we have to remember that we can only mark answers on this section if there are specific grammatical issues we can identify in the underlined phrases. In this case, there aren’t any issues. (A) is okay because “herself” can refer to the accountant. “To help” goes fine with “offered.” “As they were” might seem a little odd, but it’s actually totally fine: “as” is okay, “they” refers to the plural word “accounts,” and “were” is okay as a past-tense plural verb with “accounts” as the subject. “By” is also okay as a pronoun used in this passive-voice construction (remember that the passive voice is not a grammatical error on the SAT). So the correct answer is (E).





Page 533, Question 13


Some test-takers think the mistake in (D) is the odd phrase “than did X,” but that isn’t actually the issue here. It would have been okay to write “than did Jim’s science project.”

The mistake is actually that the SAT doesn’t let us compare things of different types. So we can compare a science project to another science project, or we can compare a person to another person, but we can’t compare a science project to a person on the SAT.

Remember that it’s always very important to figure out the exact reasoning behind a right or wrong answer on the Writing section (or for any other part of the SAT, really). That way you can be sure you’re getting the maximum benefit from your practice sessions.





Page 534, Question 22


This is a question test-takers often miss, even though the idea being tested here is the most commonly tested issue on the entire test: the difference between singular and plural.

The word “they” is plural, but it’s referring to the singular “gecko,” which the College Board doesn’t like. So (A) is the correct answer.

Remember that you must ALWAYS be on the lookout for things that change from singular to plural or from plural to singular.

In this case, I think a lot of test-takers miss the question because the pronoun appears before the noun, instead of in its usual position after the noun. Remember that you have to consider all the words in the entire sentence to make sure phrases are agreeing with one another properly.





Page 534, Question 24


Test-takers often miss this question because they overlook the verb tense issue in (A).

Remember that verb tenses can be potential errors for Identifying Sentence Errors questions on the SAT, but only when they lead to logically impossible situations.

In this case, (A) leads to a logical impossibility because the sentence says that the people “decided” to do something “after” the verb in (A)—but (A) is in the present tense (yes, the present tense—I’ll get to that in a minute).

It’s a logical impossibility to say that something that happened in the past (the decision) happened “after” something in the present (the completion of the leading). The past must come before the present, not after it.

You may be wondering how I can say that (A) is a verb in the present tense, since many English teachers would describe “has led” as a past-tense form. But from a technical perspective, “has led” is a verb in the present tense with something called “perfect aspect”—in other words, it’s a verb in the present tense that indicates that an action has already been completed. In this case, it indicates that the action of leading has been completed in the present moment.