Basic Grammar and Usage
As you’ve probably already gathered, the English Test
will never explicitly ask you to name a grammatical
error. But in order to identify and fix errors, you should know
what they are. While you’ll often be able to rely on your ear to
detect errors, many of the questions will ask you to fix phrases
that are fine for spoken English but not for formal written English.
In the following section, we’ll cover these
grammar issues, which appear on the English Test:
and Superlative Modifiers
Singular verbs must accompany singular subjects, and plural
verbs must accompany plural subjects.
SINGULAR: The man wears four
His favorite college is in Nebraska.
Matt, along with his friends, goes to
PLURAL: The men wear four
His favorite colleges are in Nebraska.
Matt and his friends go to Coney Island.
In the first example with Matt, the subject is singular
because the phrase “along with his friends” is isolated in commas.
But in the second example with Matt, his friends join the action;
the subject becomes “Matt and his friends,” calling for the change
to a plural verb.
Subject-verb agreement is a simple idea, but ACT writers
will make it tricky. Often, they’ll put the subject at one end of
the sentence and the verb a mile away. Try the following example:
|An audience of thousands of expectant|
|people who have come from afar to listen|
|to live music in an outdoor setting || seem |
| ||17||17. ||A. ||NO CHANGE|
|C. ||have seemed|
|D. ||to seem|
|terrifying to a nervous performer.|
To solve this problem, cross out the junk in the middle
that separates the subject, “an audience,” from the verb “seem.”
Remember that the subject of a sentence can never be part of a phrase
that begins with “of.” You’re left with:
An audience seem terrifying
to a nervous performer.
Now you can see what the verb should be:
An audience seems terrifying
to a nervous performer.
So the correct answer is B. Double-check
by eliminating choices C and D because they are grammatically incorrect
(and because they don’t make much sense in the sentence).
As long as you can isolate the subject and verb, handling
subject-verb agreement is relatively simple. But certain cases of
subject-verb agreement can be tricky. The ACT writers like to test
you on several of these difficult types of subject-verb agreement.
Collective nouns (such as committee, family, group, number,
and team) can be either singular or plural. The
verb depends on whether the collective noun is being treated as
a single unit or as divided individuals. For example:
SINGULAR: The number of people
living in Florida varies from year to year.
PLURAL: A number of people living in
Florida wish they had voted for Gore.
SINGULAR: The committee decides on the
PLURAL: The committee have disagreed on
the annual program.
You can often determine whether a collective noun is singular
or plural by examining the article (“the” or “a”) that precedes
it. As in the first example, “The number” is generally singular,
while “A number” is generally plural. This difference
is demonstrated in the first example above. “The number”
of people in Florida is a single entity—even though it comprises
multiple individuals—so it takes a singular verb, “varies.” “A number”
of people, on the other hand, behave as multiple individuals—even
though they wish for the same thing, they act independently of each
other—so these people require a plural verb, “wish.”
Looking to the article preceding a noun is a useful trick
when deciding whether the noun is singular or plural, but it doesn’t
always work. In the second example, “The committee”
can be both singular and plural. How the committee behaves (do they
act together or apart?) decides whether the verb is singular or
plural. If the committee does something as a unified whole (“decides on
the annual program”), then the verb is singular. If the committee
are divided in their actions (“have disagreed on
the annual program”), then the verb is plural.
Indefinite pronouns refer to persons or things that have
not been specified. Matching indefinite pronouns with the correct
verb form can be tricky because some indefinite pronouns that seem
to be plural are in fact singular. Questions dealing with singular
indefinite pronouns are popular with ACT writers, so you’d be wise
to memorize a few of these pronouns now. The following indefinite
pronouns are always singular, and they tend to appear on the English
All the indefinite pronouns in the list above should be
followed by singular verbs. For example,
Anyone over the age of 21 is eligible
to vote in the United States.
Each has its own patch
If you’re used to thinking these pronouns take plural
verbs, these sentences probably sound weird to you. Your best bet
is to memorize the list above (it’s not very long!) and to remember
that those pronouns take singular verbs.
You should also be aware that not all indefinite pronouns
are singular. Some (for example, all, any, none,
and some) can be either singular or plural depending
on the context of the sentence. Other indefinite pronouns (for example, both, few, many,
and several) are always plural. The differences
among these indefinite pronouns can be very confusing; determining
what’s right often requires an astute sense of proper English (or
good memorization). If you’re struggling to remember the different
indefinite pronouns, take comfort in these two things:
The most commonly tested indefinite pronouns are the
singular ones in the list we gave you.
probably won’t come across more than a couple of indefinite pronouns on
the English Test you take.
Most compound subjects (subjects joined by “and”) should
Kerry and Vanessa live in Nantucket.
The blue bike and the red wagon need repairs.
The reasoning behind this rule is fairly simple: you have
multiple subjects, so you need a plural noun. Thus “Kerry and Vanessa live”
and the “bike and wagon need.”
“There Is” or “There Are”?
Whether to use “there is” or “there are” depends on the
singularity or plurality of the noun that the phrase is pointing
out. If you have five grapes, you should say: “There are five grapes.”
If you have a cat, you should say: “There is a
cat.” The “is” and the “are” in these sentences are the main verbs,
so they must agree with the noun.
“Or” and “Nor”
If you have singular subjects joined by an “or” or “nor,”
the sentence always takes a singular verb. For example,
Either Susannah or Caitlin is going
to be in trouble.
If one of the subjects is plural and the other is singular,
the verb agrees with the subject closer to it. For example,
Neither the van nor the buses were operating
Either the dogs or the cat is responsible
for the mess.
Both of these examples contain a singular and a plural
subject. The main verb of the sentence is determined by the subject
nearest it: in the first example, “buses” is closer to the verb,
so the verb is plural, and in the second example, “cat” is closer
to the verb, so the verb is singular.
Mathematics, News, Dollars, Physics
These and other words look plural but are singular in
Today’s news was full of tragic
Trust your gut instinct with these words. You’ll probably
know they’re singular from everyday usage. “Dollars” is an exceptional
case—it’s singular when you’re talking about an amount of money
(“ninety dollars is a big chunk of change”) but plural when you’re
discussing a particular group of bills (“the dollars in my pocket
The ACT writers usually include several pronoun-antecedent
agreement errors on the English Test. An antecedent is a word to
which a later pronoun refers back. For example, in the sentence
“Richard put on his shoes,” “Richard” is the antecedent to which “his”
refers. When the pronoun does not agree in gender or number with
its antecedent, there’s an agreement error. For example:
WRONG: Already late for the
show, Mary couldn’t find their keys.
RIGHT: Already late for the show, Mary couldn’t
find her keys.
Unless another sentence states that the keys belong to
other people, the possessive pronoun should agree in gender and
number with “Mary.” As far as we can tell, Mary is a singular, feminine
noun, so the pronoun should be too.
The example of Mary contained a fairly obvious example
of incorrect agreement, but sometimes the agreement error isn’t
as obvious on the ACT. In everyday speech, we tend to say “someone
lost their shoe” (wrong) rather than “someone lost his shoe”
(correct) or “someone lost her shoe” (also correct)
because we don’t want to exclude either gender and because “someone
lost his or her shoe” sounds cumbersome.
The common solution? We attempt gender neutrality and
brevity by using “their” instead of “his” or “her.” In informal
speech, such a slip is okay. But if you see it on the test, it’s
You will also run into agreement errors where the antecedent
is unclear. In these cases, the pronoun is ambiguous. We use ambiguous
pronouns all the time in everyday speech, but on the test (you guessed
it) they’re wrong.
WRONG: Trot told Ted that he should
get the mauve pants from the sale rack.
This sentence is wrong because we don’t know to whom “he”
refers. Should Ted get the pants, or should Trot? Or should neither,
because mauve pants are never a good idea? You should restate the
original sentence so all the pertinent information is relayed without
confusion or multiple meanings, such as “Trot told Ted that Ted
should get the pants….”
The ACT writers will definitely include some questions
on pronoun cases. Pronoun case refers to the role of the pronoun
in a sentence. There are three cases: nominative, objective, and
possessive. You don’t need to know the names of these cases, but
you do need to know the differences between them (and knowing the
names doesn’t hurt). Here, we’ll briefly describe each case.
The Nominative Case
The nominative case should be used when a pronoun is the
subject of a sentence—for example, “I went to the
store” and “They walked to the park.” You should
also use a nominative pronoun after any form of to be:
WRONG: It was me on
RIGHT: It was I on
The right sentence may sound awkward to you, but it’s
the correct use of the nominative. The people who laid down the
rules of grammar considered to be a grammatical
equal sign, so when you have a sentence like “It was I on the phone,”
you should be able to do this: “It” = “I.” If that equation holds
true, “I” should be able to take the place of “It” in the sentence:
“I was on the phone.”
The nominative also follows comparative clauses that usually
begin with “as” or “than.” When a pronoun is involved in a comparison,
it must match the case of the other pronoun involved. For example,
WRONG: I’m fatter
than her, so I’ll probably win this sumo wrestling
RIGHT: I’m fatter than she,
so I’ll probably win this sumo wrestling match.
In this sentence, “I” is being compared to “her.” Obviously,
these two pronouns are in different cases, so one of them must be
wrong. Since only “her” is in question, it must be wrong, and therefore
“she” is the correct answer.
Another way to approach comparisons is to realize that
comparisons usually omit words. For example, it’s grammatically
correct to say, “Alexis is stronger than Bill,” but that’s an abbreviated
version of what you’re really saying. The long version is, “Alexis
is stronger than Bill is.” That last “is” is invisible in the abbreviated
version, but you must remember that it’s there. Now let’s go back
to the sumo sentence. As in our Alexis and Bill example, we don’t
see the word “is” in the comparison, but it’s implied. If you see
a comparison using a pronoun and you’re not sure if the pronoun
is correct, add the implied “is.” In this case, adding “is” leaves
us with “I’m fatter than her is.” That sounds wrong, so we know
that “she” is the correct pronoun in this case.
The Objective Case
As may be obvious from its name, the objective case should
be used when the pronoun is the object of another part of speech,
usually a preposition or a transitive verb (a verb that takes a
PREPOSITION: She handed the
presents to them.
Olivia made a cake for Emily, Sarah,
Between whom did you sit?
TRANSITIVE VERB: Harry gave
me the tickets.
Did you take him to the movies?
In the second preposition example, two names appear between
“for” and “me.” If this confuses you, eliminate “Emily, Sarah, and”
to get “Olivia made a cake for me.” Then you’ll see
that “me” is the correct pronoun case, not “I” (as in “Olivia made
a cake for I”). This strategy of crossing out intervening words
also works in spotting the correct case for an object of a transitive
In informal, spoken English, you will not hear “whom”
used frequently, but in written English (particularly written ACT
English), you must remember the all important “m.” As in the third
preposition example, “between whom” is correct; “between who” is
not. A good way to figure out if you should use “who” or “whom”
in a sentence is to see whether the sentence would use “he” or “him”
(or “they” or “them”) if it were rearranged a little. If the sentence
takes “he” or “they,” you should use “who”; if it takes “him” or
“them,” you should use “whom.”
If you rearrange “Between whom did you sit?” you get:
Did you sit between them?
Now you can see that you need to use “whom” in the original
The Possessive Case
You already know to use the possessive case when indicating
possession of an object (see “The Possessive and Pronouns” under
You should also use the possessive case before a gerund,
a verb form that usually ends with “ing” and is used as a noun.
When it comes to my studying for
the ACT, “concentration” is my middle name.
Despite hours of practice, her playing is
You can think of gerunds as turncoat verbs that are now
nouns, so they need to be preceded by the same possessive pronouns
that precede noun objects.
The following chart shows you all the pronoun cases we’ve
Now that you know something about pronoun cases, try the
following sample problem:
and Jesse || went to Cosmic Bowling|
|4|| ||4. ||F. ||NO CHANGE|
|G. ||Jesse and me|
|H. ||Jesse and I|
|J. ||I and Jesse|
Knowing when to use “I” and when to use “me” can be difficult,
especially within compound nouns. If you’re not sure which is correct,
use the crossing-out trick: cross out “and Jesse” and see what you
Me went to Cosmic
Bowling Night at the Bowladrome.
Unless you’re doing your Ralph Wiggum imitation, that
sentence sounds (and is) wrong. The correct sentence?
Jesse and I went to
Cosmic Bowling Night at the Bowladrome.
So the answer to the problem is H. Choice
J, which also contains the correct pronoun “I,” is wrong because
the conventional rules of grammar require that you show a little
deference in forming sentences involving yourself. “I” should always
come after the other people involved in the activity.
Most verb tense errors on the English Test will be pretty
easy to spot, since we don’t often make tense errors in everyday
speech. When you read a tense error on the test, it will most likely
sound wrong to you. Your ear is your most reliable way of spotting
Different Verb Tenses in One Sentence
Nowhere is it written that you must use the
same tense throughout a sentence. For example, you can say, “I used
to eat chocolate bars exclusively, but after going through a conversion
experience last year, I have broadened my range and now eat gummy
candy too.” That sentence has tense switches galore, but they are
logical: the sentence uses past tense when it talks about the past,
and present tense when it talks about the present, and the progression
from past to present makes sense. Another acceptable example:
They are the best
team in baseball, and I think they will triumph
over what could could have been devastating injuries.
But you can’t throw in different tenses willy-nilly.
They have to make sense. You can’t say:
Next year, I was on
an ocean voyage.
“Next year” refers to the future, and “was” refers to
the past. The sentence doesn’t make any sense unless you’re doing
some time travel. Your most powerful weapon against tense switch
questions is logic. We could prattle on for paragraph after paragraph
about present tense, simple past, general present, and present perfect,
but remembering the millions of different tense forms, and when
to use which, is both difficult and unnecessary. For the English
Test, if you don’t hear an error the first time you read a sentence,
and you don’t see a pronoun problem, check out the tenses and figure
out whether they’re OK.
Tricky Verbs You’re Likely to See on the ACT
By tricky verbs, we mean those verbs that never sound
quite right in any tense—like “to lie,” or “to swim.” When do you
lay and when do you lie? When do you swim and when have you swum?
Unfortunately, there’s no easy memory trick to help you remember when
to use which verb form. The only solution is to learn and remember.
You LIE down for a nap.
You LAY something down on the table.
You LAY down yesterday.
You SWIM across the English Channel.
You SWAM across the Atlantic Ocean.
You HAD SWUM across the bathtub as a child.
“To lie” and “to swim” aren’t the only two difficult verbs.
Below, you’ll find a table of difficult verbs in their infinitive,
simple past, and past participle forms. You don’t have to memorize
all of these forms; you’ll probably only see one tricky-verb question.
Still, it is well worth your time to read the list below carefully,
and especially to make sure you understand those verbs that you’ve
found confusing before.
||Lie (tell fibs)
The ACT writers are going to get a little sneaky and use
the tenses we do get wrong when we talk. One notoriously
annoying trick is the difference between “lie” and “lay” and all their
variations. Here are the rules:
LIE: to recline or
to disguise the truth
RIGHT: We lie down
on the hammocks when we want to relax.
I lie to my mother about eating the
LAY: to place
RIGHT: Just lay down
that air hockey table over there.
I lay the book on the table.
The tricky part is that the past tense of “lie” is “lay.”
She lay down yesterday,
and today she’ll lie down again.
The past tense of “lay” is “laid.”
She laid down the
law with an iron fist.
Another thorny tense issue arises with something
called the conditional. The conditional is the verb form we use
to describe something uncertain, something that’s conditional upon
something else. You can memorize the conditional formula; it goes
“If . . . were . . . would.” Look at this sentence:
WRONG: If I were
running for president, my slogan will be “I’ll
Fight for Your Right
The use of “will be” in this sentence is wrong because
you’re not certain you’re going to run for president (as suggested
by “If I were”); consequently, the word “will” is too strong. “Will”
implies you’re definitely going to campaign for president. You should
use “would” instead—the conditional form of “will”—to indicate that
running is still only a possibility.
RIGHT: If I were
running for president, my slogan would be “I’ll
Fight for Your
Right to Party.”
Notice also that the correct form is “If I were”
not “If I was.” You’ll often hear people use “was”
incorrectly in “If . . .” phrases like this, but now you’ll know
better. Sentences beginning with “If . . .” call for the subjunctive
form of the verb. In English, the subjunctive is often the same
as the regular past tense verb, but in certain cases, notably to
be, the forms are irregular:
If I were, you were, s/he were, we were, they were, who were, it were
Adverbs and Adjectives
The ACT writers will test you once or twice on your ability
to use adjectives and adverbs correctly in sentences. To describe
a noun, you use an adjective. To describe a verb, adjective, or
adverb, you use an adverb. Look at the following example:
WRONG: My mom made
a well dinner.
RIGHT: My mom made a good dinner.
Since “dinner” is a noun, the descriptive word modifying
it should be an adjective.
Now look at this example:
WRONG: My mom made
RIGHT: My mom made dinner well.
Here, the word modified is “made,” a verb, so the descriptive
word modifying it should be an adverb. Don’t let the placement of
the adverb fool you: just because it’s next to the noun “dinner”
doesn’t mean that “dinner” is the word modified. Often, though,
you will find the modifier next to the modified
WRONG: I didn’t do good in
the game last night.
RIGHT: I didn’t do well in
the game last night.
In the example above, how the athlete did (a verb) is
being described, so you need an adverb (“well”) rather than an adjective
Adverb/adjective errors are pretty common in everyday
speech, so don’t rely entirely on your ear.
WRONG: She shut
him up quick.
RIGHT: She shut him up quickly.
WRONG: I got an A easy.
RIGHT: I got an A easily.
The wrong examples above may sound familiar to you from
everyday speech, but they are incorrect in written English.
You should trust your ear
when you’re being tested on idioms. Idioms are expressions and phrasings
that are peculiar to a certain language—in the ACT’s case, the English language.
They include odd expressions like “through the grapevine” and “rain
check” as well as simple ones like “bring up” (meaning “raise”).
Idiom questions on the English Test will often ask you to identify
the correct prepositions used in certain expressions. This task
is difficult because there are no laws governing idioms. You have
to be able to read a sentence and think, “That sounds plain old
wrong.” Fortunately, you probably won’t encounter more than a few
idiom errors on the English Test you take. Take a look at this idiom
WRONG: We spent days wading
into the thousands of pages of reports.
“Wading into” sounds wrong. Instead, we say:
RIGHT: We spent days wading
through the thousands of pages of reports.
Why do we use some prepositions instead of others? That’s
just the way it is. The following is a list of proper idiomatic
|He can’t abide by the no-spitting
||It’s terrible to discriminate against parakeets.
|She accused me of stealing.
||I have a plan to escape from this
|I agreed to eat the broccoli.
||There’s no excuse for your
|I apologized for losing the
||You can’t hide from your past.
|She applied for a credit card.
||It was all he’d hoped for.
|She pretends to approve of my
||I must insist upon it.
|She argued with the bouncer.
||It’s impossible to object to her
|I arrived at work at noon.
||I refuse to participate in this
|You believe in ghosts.
||Pray for me.
|I can’t be blamed for your
||Protect me from evil.
|Do you care about me?
||Provide me with plenty of
|He’s in charge of grocery
||She stayed home to recover from the
|Nothing compares to you.
||I rely on myself.
|What is there to complain about?
||She stared at his chest.
|He can always count on money
from his mommy.
||He subscribes to several trashy
|Ice cream consists of milk,
fat, and sugar.
||I succeeded in fooling him.
|I depend on no one.
||Wait for me!
|That’s where cats differ from dogs.
||Work with me, people!
Comparative and Superlative Modifiers
Comparative modifiers compare one thing to another, while
superlative modifiers tell you how one thing compares to everything
else. For example:
COMPARATIVE: My boyfriend
is hotter than yours.
That purple-and-orange spotted dog is weirder than
the blue cat.
Dan paints better than the other students.
SUPERLATIVE: My boyfriend is the hottest boy
in the world.
That purple-and-orange spotted dog is the weirdest pet
on the block.
Of all the students, Dan paints best.
You will probably see only one or two comparative and
superlative modifier questions on the English Test, and they will
likely ask you to distinguish between the two types of modifiers.
Remember that comparative modifiers are used in relative statements;
in other words, they compare one thing to another. Just because
my boyfriend is hotter than yours, it doesn’t mean
that my boyfriend is hotter than Sue’s. However, if I used the superlative and
told you that my boyfriend is the hottest boy in
the world, then there’s no way that Sue’s boyfriend is hotter than
mine, unless, as is probably the case, I’m exaggerating.
Comparative statements always require a comparison
with something else. Simply saying “my boyfriend is hotter” may
get your meaning across in a heated dispute with your friends, but
in proper English you need to finish that sentence with a “than” phrase:
“my boyfriend is hotter than Jude Law” or “my boyfriend
is hotter than your dog.”