SAT Strategies: Overview Articles

Each Improving Sentences question is a sentence with one portion underlined. The underlined part may contain a mistake, but it doesn't always. The answer choices are all different versions of the underlined part. Your job is to determine whether any of the answer choices is better than the original underlined portion. If the original is best, you'll select choice (A), which is the same version that appears in the question.

Peterson's strategies:

1. Read the entire sentence.
2. Figure out whether the underlined portion contains a mistake. Look for errors that are commonly tested in this section.
3. If you have identified an error in the original, immediately eliminate any answer choices that repeat that error.
4. Read the choices to see what they change about the sentence. Choose the best one.
5. If there is no error in the original sentence, choose A.

Clause Structure

An independent clause can stand on its own as a sentence. A dependent clause needs to be paired with an independent clause in order to make sense. When a sentence consists of two clauses connected by a comma, one must be independent and one must be dependent. If both clauses can stand on their own as sentences, they must be separated by a semicolon, not a comma.

Modifiers

Modifiers are descriptions. Descriptions should be right next to whatever they describe. Otherwise, they can confuse the reader.

Parallel Construction

Parallelism means that two corresponding parts of a sentence should match each other.
Example: When one researches a paper, you must evaluate your sources.
One researches and you must evaluate do not match each other. They use two different pronouns to refer to the same thing. The sentence should say: When you research a paper, you must evaluate your sources.

Connecting Words

A common mistake in Sentence Improvement is to use the wrong connecting word (such as but instead of and) in the middle of a sentence, or to put in a connecting word where one does not belong.