- 1). Look at the underlined portions of the sentence and try to see the grammatical error. Do not simply look for the one that sounds weird. Only select an answer if you can specifically identify the broken rule. If you cannot identify an error, use the process of elimination.
- 2). Check underlined verbs for subject/verb agreement, tense agreement and parallelism. These are the verb rules tested on the SAT. If you cannot find one of these errors with an underlined verb, eliminate the verb from your answer choices.
- 3). Check underlined pronouns to make sure they match the noun they are replacing. Make sure that they have an antecedent --- something specific in the sentence that they replace --- and that they have only one option for an antecedent. Then, check to make sure that they are in the correct number and case to match their antecedents. If you cannot spot an error, eliminate underlined pronouns.
- 4). Check underlined nouns for subject/verb agreement and parallelism. If there is no error, eliminate underlined nouns.
- 5). Check underlined prepositions to make sure that they are used correctly in idioms. For example, in the sentence, "She was going to meet him in the ballgame," "in" is an idiom error --- the correct idiom is "at the ballgame." If all the underlined prepositions are correct, eliminate them.
- 6). Check underlined phrases or clauses for idiom errors, parallelism, wrong conjunction choices and misplaced modifiers. Eliminate answers that do not have an error.
- 7). Check underlined adjectives or adverbs for double negatives, parallelism and wrong choice of modifiers. SAT questions sometimes use adverbs where they should use adjectives and they use superlatives where they should use comparatives, so check for errors like "most" where "more" would be correct. Eliminate answers that do not have an error.
- 8). Select answer E (no error) if you have eliminated all the other choices, even if the sentence is complicated and reads like something must be wrong. E will be the correct answer for three to five of the questions on the test.