The SAT Prep Black Book(145)
Page 957, Question 26
The College Board only lets us use “she” or “he” when the word is clearly referring to a singular noun phrase somewhere in the sentence. In this case, “she” could refer either to the manager or to Ms. Andrews, so it’s not okay, and (C) is the correct answer.
Page 957, Question 28
Once more, we have a sentence in which the College Board switches from the plural to the singular—as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, this is the College Board’s favorite mistake to test. In this case, the word “they” is plural but the phrase “a candidate” is singular. We would need to change “a candidate” to “candidates” in order to make this acceptable to the College Board, so (A) is correct.
Conclusion
We’ve now seen how to handle the Identifying Sentence Errors questions on the SAT Writing Section. We’ve learned all about the rules, patterns, and processes for these questions, and we’ve seen real solutions worked out to real SAT questions published by the College Board in the Blue Book.
As is the case with every other question type on the SAT, the more you work with these questions, the better you’ll be able to answer them!
The following page offers a brief summary of the major ideas for these Identifying Sentence Errors question. After that, we’ll move on to the questions that deal with both SAT grammar and SAT style: the Improving Sentences questions.
Video Demonstrations
If you’d like to see videos of some sample solutions like the ones in this book, please visit http://www.SATprepVideos.com. A selection of free videos is available for readers of this book.
Identifying Sentence Errors Quick Summary
This is a one-page summary of the major relevant concepts for Identifying Sentence Errors questions. Use it to evaluate your comprehension or jog your memory. For a more in-depth treatment of these ideas, see the rest of the section.
The Big Secret: Awkwardness doesn’t matter. All that matters are the rules of “SAT grammar.” SAT grammar is often similar to the way people talk but differs in certain ways.
Rules and patterns:
You can pick up the fine points of SAT grammar by going through the Blue Book solutions in this Black Book, or by reading the appendix in this Black Book. Apart from those, here are the rules and patterns unique to ISE questions:
oStyle doesn't count. You can only pick something if it actually breaks a rule, not just because you think you could make it sound better.
oYou can't pick an underlined phrase because you think the whole phrase should be deleted, except in cases of redundancy (which are rare on the SAT).
oYou’ll often see unnecessary descriptive phrases inserted between two words that should agree.
oThe issue of “singular vs plural” is the single most commonly tested concept.
oQuestions 25 - 29 or so tend to be more convoluted than the other questions.
oComparisons can only be made between similar things, and only in similar ways.
oNo substitutes for the word “and” (you can’t use “with,” “in addition to,” “as well as,” and so on).
oVerb tenses can only be wrong if they’re misconjugated or impossible in context.
oPrepositional idioms might be tested a couple of times or so. Only an issue for questions with no other errors.
Here's the Identifying Sentence Errors process:
oRead entire prompt sentence.
oFocus on underlined portions of prompt sentence.
oThink about how each word in the underlined portions relates to other words in the sentence (draw lines if it helps).
oLook for an underlined word that doesn't agree with a word it's related to.
oConsider that there might be nothing wrong with the sentence.
oRe-read the sentence and mark your answer. Remember there must be a broken SAT grammar rule.
For examples of these concepts in action, see the sample Blue Book solutions in this Black Book.
Overview and Important Reminders for Improving Sentences on the SAT Writing Section
The Improving Sentences questions on the SAT Writing section are relatively straightforward and repetitive once you develop a feel for the rules and patterns we’ll talk about in the next couple of pages. Each question presents you with a sentence that has an underlined word or phrase. The answer choices then provide you with several possible versions of the underlined portion of the prompt sentence. Your job is to choose the version of the underlined phrase that fits best according to the College Board’s ideas of grammar and style.
Don’t worry! You’ll find that these questions test a fairly limited number of concepts, and—like everything else on the SAT—you’ll be able to answer them pretty mechanically with a little practice. Let’s get started.