FUNDAMENTALS

Important Things to Know About the GMAT's Approach to Sentence Correction

1. GMAT grammer adheres to the rules of "Standard Written English"

Standard written English refers to the grammar rules that you find in grammar books and in formal writing. Since proper written English often differs from spoken English, the best answer will not always sound the best, and will sometimes sound terrible. You cannot rely on your ear alone: you must become familiar with the grammar rules of written English.

2. The GMAT tests a limited number of grammar rules.

English grammar contains hundreds of nitpicky rules. Luckily, the GMAT only tests a few. So devote your energies to mastering these rules: if you try to conquer all of English grammar, you'll likely do far worse than if you confine your studies to the most commonly-occurring rules. Missing one obscure-rule question is much better than missing six parallelism questions.

3. Grammar is key - but style is important, too

On the GMAT, the correct answer must not only be grammatically correct: it must be stylistically correct, too. This means that the best answer must also be clear, without unnecessary redundancy, and with proper punctuation. Idioms must be used correctly.
Style is a secondary concern. Look for grammar errors first, and then check for style errors.

4. Don't change the meaning of the sentence

In the sentence correction section, you'll sometimes find two answer choices that are equally correct in terms of grammar and style conventions. When this happens, choose the answer that maintains the meaning of the original sentence. The best answer will never significantly alter the original meaning.

5. Incorrect answer choices are incorrect

Sentence Correction answer choices are variations on the correct answer. Incorrect answers will almost always be identifiable as such: that is, incorrect answers contain errors. Even if an answer choice sounds funny, if you can't find a definite error, then don't rush to eliminate it.

Fundamentals - Grammar Definitions

Fundamentals - Eight Types of Errors in the Sentence Correction Section

A. Subject-Verb Agreement

1. What "Agreement" Means in English Grammar
"Agreement" is one of the fundamental rules of English grammar. Essentially, the rule dictates that corresponding parts of a sentence must match – "agree with" – one another. What exactly does this mean? If you've ever studied a foreign language like French or Italian, you're already familiar with the concept of agreement: when you change the form of a word to make it fit properly into the sentence, like changing the ending of a masculine adjective to feminine because the noun it modifies is feminine –- that's agreement. Agreement allows us to show who's doing what in a sentence in a clear and unconfusing manner. Without such a method of clarification – of indicating which adjectives in a sentence modify which nouns, or which nouns are governed by which verbs – clear expression, in writing and speech alike, would be very difficult.

Because English is structured differently than French or Italian (or Spanish or Polish or Latin, etc etc), the changes you have to make in order to adhere to the rules of agreement will be different. But the basic concept – of assuring a "match in form" between corresponding parts of a sentence - is the same.

2. Kinds of Agreement
In the English language, agreement applies to several different kinds of pairings: nouns and their verbs; pronouns and their verbs; adjectives and the nouns the modify; prepositions and the verb(s) they govern. Depending on the nature of the pairing, agreement may be required in terms of tense, number, or case. Tense and number apply to verbs; number applies to verbs, nouns, and pronouns; and case applies to nouns, pronouns, and modifiers:

Tense: indicates when an action happened, is happening, or will happen
Number: indicates "how many" - singular (one) or plural (more than one)
Case: indicates role of noun or pronoun in sentence. In English, nouns only change form for the possessive case, while pronouns have different forms for the possessive, subjective, and objective cases.

Agreement requires that corresponding parts of a sentence match in as many of these ways as possible: for example, a noun and verb can agree in terms of number (singular or plural) only, while a noun and a pronoun can agree in terms of both number (singular and plural) and case (possessive or otherwise). For native English speakers, agreement is for the most part instinctive, presenting little difficulty in simple constructions: singular nouns agree with singular verbs, plural nouns with plural verbs, and so forth.

But more complex sentences - those containing several nouns, verbs, and/or pronouns – can sometimes make even the most simple applications of agreement confusing.

3. Agreement in Action
In order to apply agreement rules, you must be able to recognize when agreement is required: what parts of the sentence are "corresponding parts"? While a full discussion of this topic goes beyond the scope of this lesson, you may be happy to learn that for the purpose of preparing for the GMAT, you only need to be able to recognize a few common cases, the primary one being subject-verb agreement.

Subject-verb agreement is the variety of agreement that deals with the subject of the sentence (either a noun or pronoun) and the main verb in the sentence. Because a sentence can contain more than one noun and verb, subject-verb agreement helps to clarify which noun is the subject, and by which verb it is governed. Refer to the main chapter for help on recognizing and correcting subject-verb agreement errors on the GMAT.

B. Modifiers

Modification is a fairly basic concept in English grammar. Essentially, the role of a modifier is to add descriptive detail to a word, concept, or phrase. Modifiers most often take the form of adjectives or adverbs: descriptive words like red, happy, quickly and strangely that help to describe nouns or verbs in the sentence.

However, as you'll see in the main chapter, entire phrases can also be used as modifiers. Modifying phrases function the same way as single-word modifiers do, but because they're often buried in an already complicated sentence, they can be harder to spot than adjectives and adverbs. The main chapter will give you more detailed tips and methods by which to recognize these kinds of modifiers on the GMAT. But for general reference, keep this rule in mind: Any part of a sentence that adds extra information can be considered a modifier.

C. Parallelism

Parallelism has the special distinction of being one of the most basic and most complicated concepts of English grammar. Because the main chapter only touches on parallelism's underlying structure, this section will attempt a more comprehensive explanation of what parallelism means, how it works, and why it is a necessary and important component of English composition.

Parallelism means something very similar to what it means in mathematics. Think of parallel lines:

To translate this mathematical concept to grammar, first think of a sentence. A sentence can be split up in many different ways: by word, by phrase, by part of speech, by items in a list. What parallelism says is that these similar parts of a sentence must be clearly similar, just like parallel lines are. For example, items in a list must all use the same verb form, and the same way of introducing themselves as being part of the list.

Think of it like this: pretend that the parts of a sentence are lined up, one on top of the next, along their own parallel lines. Consider the sentence "Joe was trying to decide between eating, running, and to walk to the store". There are three items in the list of activities that Joe is considering, so separate these and imagine them on their own parallel lines:

To be parallel, all verbs must look identical. In this case, one sticks out like a sore thumb: "to walk". Here's the correct version:

This way of visualizing is, of course, just meant to help you understand a little more about how parallelism works. If you're still having difficulty with the concept, consider consulting a grammar book.

Don't neglect parallelism, even if you find it to be an especially difficult concept. English composition depends on parallelism to maintain clarity, and to avoid what might otherwise be total chaos in the structuring of sentences.

D. Pronoun Agreement

Pronoun agreement is another type of agreement similar to the subject-verb agreement discussed in section A. When replacing any noun (Bill, the cheerleader, the chair) with a pronoun (he, she, it), the pronoun must match the form of missing noun. The form of the noun can be broken down into three elements: number, gender, and case.

Number: A noun can be either singular (one) or plural (more than one) and the pronoun must reflect that. For example: Bill went to the store. Because Bill is singular (one person) the correct pronoun would be he as in "He went to the store" and not "They went to the store". The pronoun they would be appropiate only if more than one person was going to the store. For example, "The students went to the store" would change to "They went to the store" because there is more than one person.

Gender: This refers to whether the noun is masculine or feminine. The pronoun must reflect this. For example, "Bill went to the store" should be rewritten as "He went to the store" and not "She went to the store" because Bill is male.

Case: Keep in mind whether the noun is the subject or object of the sentence and use the appropriate pronoun. The subject of the sentence is the noun that is doing the action. In the sentence "Bill went to the store", Bill is the person "going", so replace "Bill" with "he": "He went to the store". The subject of the sentence is the thing receiving the action. Take the sentence "The ball struck Bill in the arm". In this case Bill is the one being struck, therefore use the objective pronoun (him). The ball struck him in the arm.

You'll find more on pronoun agreement in the main chapter.

E. Verb Time Sequences

On the GMAT, "verb time sequence" means nothing more than "which verb form to use in which situation". Because English verb form is very complicated, however, a section is included in "Advanced Topics" which gives an overview of the variety of forms. If you are not completely comfortable with verb tense, you should review the advanced section for help.

F. Comparisons

Comparison, as a concept, is closely tied to parallelism. The basic idea behind it is that you should always make perfectly clear to the reader what you're speaking about in every situation. Comparison, however, deals less with lists of things than with the comparison of two or more things, which may not always be explicitly named; as a result, pronoun use is more common in comparison questions.

Some common phrases used in comparisons are as much as, more than, less than, just like, as, and that of.

G. Idioms

Idiomatic expressions are groups of words whose meaning, when considered as whole, is something entirely different than the meaning of each individual word. This means that, if you're not completely comfortable with the English language, it's not enough to know what each word means itself; you must be familiar with that particular combination of words.

The meaning of "idiom" as used in the GMAT is slightly different. For the GMAT, "idiom" refers to standards of usage for certain words or phrases, words or phrases which are often used incorrectly. Some examples of common mistakes are susbstituting "among" for "between", or "consistent between" instead of "consistent with". Intuition alone doesn't allow you to determine which is correct, so you must either be extremely familiar with the English language, or have a list of common idiom errors at your disposal. Luckily, one such list is provided in the main chapter; it includes almost all the common idiom errors found on the GMAT.