Sentence

Correction

GMAT
Verbal Section
The Graduate Management Admission
Test is a computer adaptive test
intended to assess certain analytical,
writing, quantitative, verbal, and
reading skills in written English.

What is GMAT?
Parts of Speech

Nouns

Pronouns Verbs Conjunctions

Adjectives Adverbs prepositions

What is a sentence?

Verb
Subject

Object
Noun/ Pronoun Action Noun/Pronoun
“Optional”
Grammar Rules
1- Agreement

• Mohamed hangs out with

Noun-Verb his friends every week.
Agreement • Ahmed and Amira visit their
grandma every Monday.

• He Likes football.
Pronoun-Verb • They don’t prefer watching
TV.
Agreement
Subject-Verb Agreement
Subject should agree with verb in number

 My friend lives in Boston.

 My dog, as well as my cats, likes cat food.
 The book that I got from my parents was interesting.
 Some of the book is interesting.
 Some of the books are interesting.
 One of my friends is here.
 None of the boys is here.
 The number of students in the class is fifteen.
 A number of students in the class are absent.
Subject-Verb Agreement
Subject should agree with verb in number

 There are twenty students in the class.

 The news is interesting.
 Eight hours of sleep is enough.
 Five thousand miles is too far to travel.
 Two and two is four.
 Those people are from Canada
 The English drink tea.
 Not only my mother but also my sister is here.
 Neither my sister nor my brothers are going to do it.
Making the subject & verb disagree

GMAT Test makers make the identification of the subject difficult

by adding muddling “confusing” modifiers.

Ex. The cross-eyed white panther, a species indigenous

“native” to the deepest jungles of Southeast Asia and
sought as a trophy by wildlife thieves who hunt the
massive beasts using attack rifles, are rapidly nearing
extinction.
Pronouns must have a clear
referent

– When a liquid is released from a bottle under

pressure, it gets colder.
– Ex. In this article, they imply that everybody who
dislikes this philosophy must still accept its
principal tenet. “incorrect”
 Pronouns

“Verb to BE” is an intransitive verb and is

always followed by a subject pronoun.

• It must have been she at the door.

• I wish I were he.
• He didn’t know that it was I who did it.
 2- Diction- choice of words

• We divided candy among the three of us. (2+)

Among Vs. Between • She and I divided the sweets between us. (2)

• I work as a professor.
As Vs. Like • It felt like a dream.

• We passed by many buildings. “much”

Mass and Count Nouns
• He wished me much happiness. “many”

- Mum and I went to the store.

Pronoun Myself - I made the cake myself.
- He gave me the present.
3- Grammatical Construction

Fragments
Correct: “We saw the doctor and his nurse at the party.”
Incorrect: “We saw the doctor at the party. Andhis nurse.”

Run‐on sentences

• Correct: “Jose Canseco is still a feared batter; most pitchers don’t want to face
him.”
• Incorrect: “Jose Canseco is still a feared batter most pitchers don’t want to face
him.”
Constructions: Avoid wordy, redundant constructions

Correct: “We could not come to the meeting because of a conflict.”

Incorrect: “Th e reason we could not come to the meeting is because of a conflict.”
 4- Idiom
Prepositions
• Correct: “She likes to jog in
the morning.”
• Incorrect: “She likes to jog
on the morning.”
• Correct: “They ranged in
age from 10 to 15.”
• Incorrect: “They ranged in
age from 10 up to 15.”
Correlatives
• Correct: “I have called not
only to thank her but also
to tell her about the next
meeting.”
• Incorrect: “I have called
not only to thank her but
also I told her about the
next meeting.”
Forms of comparison
• There were fewer children
in my class this year. “less”
• There was less devastation
than I was told. “Fewer”
• We had to choose between
chocolate and vanilla. “or”
• (It is also correct to say,
“We had to choose
chocolate or vanilla.”)
• I ran farther than John, but
he took his weight training
further than I did.”
 5- Logical Prediction

Modification problems:
– Modifiers should be positioned so it is clear what word or words they are meant
to modify. If modifiers are not positioned clearly, they can cause illogical
references or comparisons, or distort the meaning of the statement.
Examples:
Correct: “I put the cake that I baked by the door.”
Incorrect: “I put the cake by the door that I baked.”
Correct: “Reading my mind, she gave me the delicious cookie.”
Incorrect: “Reading my mind, the cookie she gave me was delicious.”
 Modifiers
Types of Modifiers

1. Adjectives
2. Appositives: descriptive phrases set off from the main
sentence by commas.
3. Prepositional phrases: preposition + noun
EX. After a long courtship, Mandy, a brilliant surgeon,
married her boyfriend, Max, in a small church on the
property of a huge farming land in Michigan.
Using Misplaced Modifiers

A modifier should be next to the word it

modifies
Modifiers must stay close to home

Ex. Unwilling to threaten the revenue generated by

the city’s two airports, the plan to build a third
airport outside the city limits was opposed by the
mayor.
 6- Parallelism

 Constructing a sentence that is parallel in structure depends on making sure that

the different elements in the sentence balance each other; this is a little bit like
making sure that the two sides of a mathematical equation are balanced. To
make sure that a sentence is grammatically correct, check to ensure that
phrases, clauses, verbs, and other sentence elements parallel each other.
Examples:
Correct: “I took a bath, went to sleep, and woke up refreshed.”
Incorrect: “I took a bath, sleeping, and waking up refreshed.”
Good sentence structure avoids constructions that
are awkward, wordy, redundant, imprecise, or
unclear, even when they are free of grammatical
errors.
Examples:
“Before we left on vacation, we watered the plants, checked
to see that the stove was off , and
set the burglar alarm.”
“Before we left to go on vacation, we watered, checked to be
sure that the stove had been turned off , and set it.”

7- Rhetorical Construction
 8- Verb Form

Present Tenses Past Tenses Future Tense

Present Past Future

Simple Simple Simple

Present Past
Continuous Continuous

Present Past
Perfect Perfect
Usual vs. is usual

Usual stands for comparing the same thing with itself while
is usual is when compared to a sub-group.

1. He is nicer than usual.

2. He is faster than is usual for any human being.

Any Questions?!

Thank You 