SAT Grammar Questions: What They Test

College Board calls this group Standard English Conventions. It's one of the four content areas in the Reading and Writing section, and it makes up about 26% of the scored questions (11 to 15 questions).

Source: College Board: Assessment Framework for the Digital SAT Suite

The questions are short. You edit a sentence or two so that it follows the conventions of Standard English. They come in two kinds, Boundaries and Form, Structure, and Sense.

Source: College Board: Assessment Framework for the Digital SAT Suite

Boundaries questions ask whether the sentence is complete and whether the punctuation joins or separates its parts the right way. College Board lists end punctuation, semicolons and colons, and commas, dashes and parentheses that set off extra information. It also lists times when no punctuation is needed at all.

Source: College Board: Assessment Framework for the Digital SAT Suite

Try this one. Which choice is correct? "The lab opened late (blank) the results were due the next morning." A semicolon works, because each side could be a complete sentence on its own. A comma alone doesn't, because it can't join two complete sentences.

Source: College Board: Assessment Framework for the Digital SAT Suite

Here is one where the answer is no punctuation: "The student who finished first handed in the test." The words "who finished first" are needed to say which student, so commas would be wrong.

Source: College Board: Assessment Framework for the Digital SAT Suite

These questions ask whether a word form or a sentence's structure fits its meaning. College Board's list has six skills:

Source: College Board: Assessment Framework for the Digital SAT Suite

• Subject-verb agreement. "The box of old photographs is on the shelf." The subject is "box," not "photographs."
• Pronoun-antecedent agreement. "The team checked its time." One team, so "its."
• Verb finiteness. A sentence needs a main verb. "The committee meeting on Tuesday" isn't a sentence. "The committee meets on Tuesday" is.
• Verb tense and aspect. "By the time the bell rang, she had finished." The earlier action takes "had finished."
• Subject-modifier placement. "Walking to school, Maya saw a fox." The opening phrase has to describe the word that comes right after the comma.
• Genitives and plurals. This covers choices like its and it's, their, they're and there, and your and you're, plus singular and plural possessives.

Source: College Board: Assessment Framework for the Digital SAT Suite

College Board says the aim is clear writing in real contexts, not correctness for its own sake. Read the whole sentence before you choose, and ask what it's trying to say.

Source: College Board: Assessment Framework for the Digital SAT Suite

The Student Question Bank lets you filter by test, domain, skill and difficulty. Choose Reading and Writing, then Standard English Conventions, and work one skill at a time. When you miss a question, note which skill it tested before you move on.

Source: College Board: how to use the Student Question Bank

The Bluebook practice tests are scored and let you review each question, so you can see which skill cost you points.

Source: College Board: full-length digital practice tests on Bluebook