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Preparation Strategy

The 8 Major Errors Of GMAT English

 

Spotting bad sentences is the key to doing well on sentence structure test questions.

 

1. Pronoun error
   

There are 3 main types of pronoun errors encountered in GMAT.

• Plural and Singular
  

  Once you start with one, you need to stay in the same quantity (singular or plural).
  

  
   

  Singular Pronouns (Memorize these)
  

  Hint: Do you see the categories I setup? It's SANE to memorize this
  

  Some---
  

  Any—
  

  No—
  

  Every—
  

  
   

    

Be aware that group, jury, team, country, family are singular. Society today uses them sometimes as plural. This is because these act as a single unit when they do something.

    

Plural Pronouns (Memorize these)    

 

Singular and Plural Pronouns – depends on whether the noun is singular or plural (Memorize these)    

 

 

 

The plural and singular clause error

When two nouns are in the sentence doing an action together but they are linked with

• Along with
  
• Together with
  
• With
  
• As well as
  
• In addition to
  
• Accompanied by
  

 

… this does not make the following action they do plural. Only "and" can take the two singulars and make their action plural.

For example

Janie, with her poodle limping behind her, walks to the dog park.

Explanation: Janie is singular. The poodle is singular. They both do the action together, but the use of "with" means that we need to keep the verb singular. "Walks" is singular and "Walk" is plural.

Remember, a verb that ends with an –s is singular.

 

• Pronoun reference error- referring pronoun is not correctly placed.
  

  For example:
  

  In the sentence "Samantha and Jane went shopping, but she couldn't find anything she liked.", the pronoun "she" does not refer to a person unambiguously. It is difficult to understand that whether "she" is referring to Samantha or Jane.
  

  The correct form would be "Samantha and Jane went shopping, but Samanatha couldn't find anything she liked."
  

  
   

• Relative pronouns are often used incorrectly today.
  
  • Referring to things or animals – that, which
    
  • Referring to people—who, whom
    
  • They – be careful that you don't use this unless you're positive there is a referring noun. Today we often use "they" to replace the use of a proper noun which it is not. It's a Pronoun.