6
The Sentence Correction questions should be approached in an entirely different manner than the Error ID
questions, but one thing holds true for both types:
You cannot depend on your ear to lead you to the right answer.
The mistake most students make is to judge an answer choice based on the way it SOUNDS. It SOUNDS
wrong, so I don’t want to pick it. Answer choice (B) SOUNDS better so I’ll chose it. Sounding right is not
legitimate justification for choosing an answer, and often an answer choice that sounds wrong is actually correct.
Here’s why: People don’t speak in a grammatically correct manner. What might sound right (because of the way we
are used to hearing people talk) could totally violate a grammar rule. So rather than justifying an answer choice
with “it sounds right” or eliminating an answer choice because “it sounds wrong,” base your picks on one of the
19 grammar rules covered in Chapters 3-5.
Now I’m going to contradict myself; using your ear to test prepositions is oftentimes helpful, and you can get
away with using your ear on the Sentence Corrections more than you can on the Error IDs. But trust me, picking an
answer and justifying it with a grammar rule feels so much better than using that silly phrase, “it just sounds right.”
Sentence Corrections Technique ..........................................................................
There are 25 Sentence Correction problems on the SAT. ETS underlines either a portion of the sentence, or the
entire sentence. There can be more than one error in the underlined portion of the sentence. The non-underlined
portion of the sentence is ALWAYS correct and CANNOT be changed. Your job is to determine whether the
underlined portion has errors, or is correct as written.
Answer Choice (A) is the underlined portion of the sentence as originally written, so
if there is no error, then pick (A). If there is an error, then immediately eliminate (A).
No need to look at it again.
Step 1: Read the entire sentence and decide if there is an error.
Option #1: No Error
If you believe the sentence is correct as written, you should still go through
answer choices (B) through (E) to make sure you aren’t missing something
and that there is not a better option.