Grammatical Concepts and Editing Issues Covered on the English 101 Grammar Exam

Below you will find the topics covered on the new grammar exam as well as the number of items in each section, the instructions for each section, and the sections of The St. Martin's Handbook that correspond to each section.

Grammatical Concepts:

Subjects and Predicates: 5 items

Identify the subjects and predicates in the following sentences:
  1. simple subject
  2. complete subject
  3. simple predicate
  4. complete predicate
  5. none of the above

St. Martin's Chapter31, pgs. 592-600

Phrases and Clauses: 5 items

Identify the phrases and clauses in the following sentences:
  1. phrase
  2. dependent clause
  3. independent clause
  4. none of the above

St. Martin's Chapter 31, pgs. 600-603

Sentence types: 6 items

Identify the sentence type of each of the following sentences:

a) Simple

b) Compound

c) Complex

d) Compound-complex

St. Martin's Chapter 31, pgs. 603-606

Nominalizations: 3 items

Select the letter that precedes the nominalization in the following sentences. If none of the italicized words in a sentence is a nominalization, choose (e) none.

St. Martin's Chapter 47, pg. 729

Active and Passive Voice: 4 items

Indicate the voice of the verbs in the following sentences
  1. active voice
  2. passive voice

St. Martin's Chapter 47, pgs. 730-731

Shifts in voice, person, number, and tense: 6 items

Indicate whether the relationships of voice, person, and tense remain consistent or shift:
  1. shift in voice
  2. shift in person
  3. shift in tense
  4. voice, person, and tense remain consistent

St. Martin's Chapter 38, pgs. 666-668

Stylistic choices: 9 items

The following sentences might be flawed by faulty parallelism, unnecessary expletives, or wordiness. Indicate the type of flaw in each sentence. If the sentence is correct, select d) correct.
  1. faulty parallelism St. Martin's Chapter 45, pgs. 713-718
  2. unnecessary expletive St. Martin's Chapter 47, pg. 728
  3. wordiness St. Martin's Chapter 43, pgs. 701-703
  4. correct

St. Martin's Chapters 10 and 11, pgs. 191-203

Agreement: 8 items

Note if the author has correctly matched subjects and verbs as well as pronouns and their antecedents.
  1. agree
  2. do not agree

St. Martin's Chapters 34 and 35, pgs. 636-649

Pronoun reference: 4 items

Indicate whether or not the author has provided clear pronoun reference
  1. clear pronoun reference
  2. unclear pronoun reference

St. Martin's Chapter 37, pgs. 660-665

Modifiers: 8 items

Indicate whether or not the author should revise the modifiers in the following sentences.
  1. The author should revise the modifier(s) to clarify the meaning.
  2. The author need not revise this sentence.

St. Martin's Chapter 41, pgs. 683-690

Punctuation: Comma and Semi-colon 14 items

Indicate the correct punctuation for the following sentences.
  1. comma
  2. semi-colon
  3. no punctuation

St. Martin's Chapter 48 and 49, pgs. 738-759, see also Chapter 39, pgs. 671-677

Punctuation: Colon, Apostrophes, Quotation Marks 9 items

Indicate whether the author has correctly or incorrectly used colons, apostrophes, and quotation marks.
  1. All uses are correct in this sentence
  2. One or more uses are incorrect

St. Martin's Chapters 51, 52, and 53, pgs. 765-791

Usage: 11 items

Indicate whether the usage in the following sentences is correct.
  1. correct
  2. incorrect

St. Martin's Glossary of Usage, pgs. 982-990

Mechanics: Capitals, Numbers, Italics, and Hyphens 8 items

Indicate whether the following sentences correctly use capitals, numbers, italics, and hyphens.
  1. correct use
  2. incorrect use

St. Martin's Chapters 54, 55, 56, and 57, pgs. 794-820

 

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