A few writing questions...

StrangeCamus
Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:55:15 +0000

The best way to handle grammar is IMO reading like a machine. LOL i know that sounds kind of weird, but let me explain.

When you read a grammar question, the first thing you want to do is forget all meaning of the sentence. When you read each word, read the word for what it is (noun, adjective, adverb, etc), not for what it means.

Example:

As my doctor instructed me to take regular medicines, I…

Don’t think about the fact that there is a doctor or anything else. Try to focus enough on WHAT the words are almost to the point where you don’t know what the sentence means.

The actual meaning of the words tends to create images in our mind of the event or situation the sentence describes. Whether or not you realize it, this distracts you from the main purpose of the questin: to find the grammatical error.



As you read each word, phrase, and clause, keep alert for idiom errors, subject-verb disagreements, misplaced modifiers, etc.



On the SAT, doing everything up to this point will find you the right answer 99% of the time (I made up that statistic, but you get the point).



How to confidently know you have the right answer. After doing everything up to now, if you still have not spotted any grammatical errors, don’t assume there’s no error yet!. Sometimes, what the SAT test will do is have a grammatically correct sentence, but an illogical event, often created by the use of the wrong word. Grammatically, the sentence structure and every phrase is correct, but inconsistency between the logic of the sentence exists.

NOTE: I know this sounds a little weird at first, but just follow the steps and your score should improve. (1) Ignore sentence meaning. (2) Peruse carefully for grammatical errors (3) Double Check (4) Triple Check! (5) Quadruple check! (6) If no errors, look for logical inconsistency (5) If everything looks good, briefly skim the sentence again to check for grammar or logic issues AGAIN (6) Still nothing? Good, go mark “No error”

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I just realized this thread is 2 years old…Oh well, I should post this as a guide for SAT grammar lol…