![Collective Nouns on the SAT
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Collective nouns are like great friends; they don’t mind that a few more come along for the ride. Whether you are all there are individuals or prefer to be referred to as a group, you are all there with one goal in mind, to have a great time! Collective nouns may not be as much fun as your friends, but they do serve a very important purpose in grammar as well as on the SATs. Let’s find out what they are all about. Collective Nouns A collective noun, simply put is a noun (person, place or thing) that refers to more than one entity. Unfortunately, it gets a little bit more complicated than that. Collective nouns are somewhat two-fold, and here are two easy ways to identify them. Collective nouns agree with either singular or plural nouns. This means that depending on the sentence, a collective noun can take either a singular inflection or a plural inflection. In a nutshell, you can conjugate the verb for either a singular usage or a plural usage. Collective nouns can take either a singular or plural pronoun. As you know, a pronoun is a word that refers to an entire noun (e.g. he, she, it they, etc.). So what does a collective noun look like? They are words like: army, committee, group and team. An additional explanation plus a short list of examples can be found here . How do collective nouns cause problems? For some readers, collective nouns can cause confusion because of their innate ability to carry both singular and plural tendencies. This means that it can lead to subject-verb agreement...
What’s an Idiom? Idioms are one of the most difficult verbal concepts on the SAT because they do not have a logical set of rules you can game. An idiom is an expression. It’s something English speakers have said sometimes for centuries. We just absorb idioms by growing up amongst other English speakers, like osmosis. Years of repetition have made them the rule. The easiest to spot are metaphors, like “spill the beans.” When someone says, “he spilled the beans,” we know they don’t mean clumsy Joe literally knocked over his bowl of chilli. Bigmouth Joe told a secret. He “let the cat out of the bag,” “broke the news,” “flapped his gums,” “dished the dirt,” or “took the lid off it.” SAT Idioms Sadly, those fun phrases WON’T be on the SAT. You will be tested on subtle conjunctions and prepositions. When we say, “I believe in unlimited texting”–that’s an idiom. I know, I know, it looks like a grammatical construction, but look closer. There’s no actually rule against saying, “I believe at unlimited texting,” but you’d be laughed out of the classroom if you did. “Believe in” just sounds right (to native English speakers, that is). And it is right. Idioms are tricky because they are memorized, not known. The ultimate guide to grammar has one of the best explanations of idioms. If you get stuck with Erica’s work Barron’s also does a fairly decent job taking you through idioms. That’s why remembering to think of idiomatic expressions when you’re “racing against the clock,” will help make idiom test questions “a piece of cake.” Why? Because you’ll...
Online SAT class was created to provide expert training videos, community forums, and a series of practice problems. It was created to provide all of that for a very affordable price. In order to build on that, I wanted to start a blogging culture around some of our most popular courses. Today, I am writing to introduce you to SAT Grammar. Throughout this mini-course, I will teach: Subject-Verb Agreement Parallelism Pronouns Style Modifiers Please click on the correct link above for immediate access. Modifiers Modifiers dangle throughout the SAT. It is your job to figure out how to beat them. Let’s figure out...
Online SAT class was created to provide expert training videos, community forums, and a series of practice problems. It was created to provide all of that for a very affordable price. In order to build on that, I wanted to start a blogging culture around some of our most popular courses. Today, I am writing to introduce you to SAT Grammar. Throughout this mini-course, I will teach: Subject-Verb Agreement Parallelism Pronouns Style Modifiers Please click on the correct link above for immediate access. Pronouns Pronouns require you to avoid ambiguity & non-agreement. Let’s figure out...
Online SAT class was created to provide expert training videos, community forums, and a series of practice problems. It was created to provide all of that for a very affordable price. In order to build on that, I wanted to start a blogging culture around some of our most popular courses. Today, I am writing to introduce you to SAT Grammar. Throughout this mini-course, I will teach: Subject-Verb Agreement Parallelism Pronouns Style Modifiers Please click on the correct link above for immediate access. Subject-verb agreement S-V agreement requires you to match the gender and number of both the subject & the verb. This sounds easy, but the SAT has ways to make it tricky. Let’s figure out...
Online SAT class was created to provide expert training videos, community forums, and a series of practice problems. It was created to provide all of that for a very affordable price. In order to build on that, I wanted to start a blogging culture around some of our most popular courses. Today, I am writing to introduce you to SAT Grammar. Throughout this mini-course, I will teach: Subject-Verb Agreement Parallelism Pronouns Style Modifiers Please click on the correct link above for immediate access. Style Style require you to avoid redundancy and passive voice. Let’s figure out...
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