what's up future College Superstars Laura here with STP and if you're trying to improve your English score on the SAT there's no better way to do it than with knowing the grammar rules front and back so in this video today we are going to dive into tips and tricks for grammar that are slicker than your latest IG post forget those old dusty textbooks because in this video we're going to just break everything down super simply and I'm going to link down in the description the document that I'm using to walk you through all these tips if you want more than just this document for the video go ahead and click the link up here because we're actually giving away our English workbook for free for a limited time so there's way more exercises activities tips strategies questions in there go grab that today and by the end of this video the goal is for you to spot grammar um issues and grammar problems quicker than your friend can spot a Tik Tac you know how long I've been waiting for this W I'm about to make a name for myself here before we get started though do something good for yourself today if you haven't yet hit the Subscribe button and notification Bell below cuz if you take all of Taylor Swift's hit songs then multiply that by a thousand we've helped at least that many students if not more [Music] all right guys the first thing I want to cover is subject verb agreement because so many students get that wrong so just a heads up if I have a statement that says the box of chocolates are on the table that is incorrect because the subject is actually singular it's the box now this thing right here of chocolates that's called a prepositional phrase so that since it starts with an of is just describing more about the subject so um preposition phrases typically um they denote like um location a lot of the times so you might see around under through by those are all prepositions of is a huge one on the SAT so if you're on a question with a verb you got to pick the right verb tense and you see an of somewhere before the blank you probably have a prepositional phrase and you've got to cross that out so all that's extra I'm going to get rid of it and then when you read the subject next to the verb now you can see it sounds really bad I don't say the Box are on the table I would say the box is on the table okay let's look at another example sometimes with subject verb agreement the SAT will hide the subject from the verb not with a prepositional phrase but with a non-essential Clause so a non-essential Clause is essentially something that doesn't need to be there for the sentence to make sense and for the sentence to stand on its own so when I read example two it says the commissioner along Ong with his 20 staff members run a tight campaign against the incumbent well my subject is really the commissioner and all of this stuff in between two commas that is a non-essential Clause so that's what you're looking for non-essential Clauses they go between two commas two dashes two parentheses and you basically want to ask yourself if I cross that out will the sentence still make sense it sure will I could say the commissioner run a tight campaign and actually I want to cross this off to hear my subject right next to my verb and then I realize it sounds silly it should say the commissioner runs a tight campaign because commissioner is singular so just be ready for those tricks that they'll throw at you because they just like to put lots of words in between the subject and the verb let's look at a couple examples so here's an example of a question it says although well first of all let's just talk strategies the blank isn't until the second sentence so I'm not even going to read this first sentence because that's just going to be a waste of my time especially on module two because module two we're so tight with time the reading passages take so long you need to cut Corners wherever you possibly can the next thing I want you to do after you determine there's some parts that you don't need to read is to look at the answer choices when you're on a grammar question the answer choices will essentially tell you what they're testing you on so when I see verb tenses here I am thinking two things one subject verb agreement and I always start there two parallelism okay how will I know which type of question I'm on I'll know because I'm going to play the pronoun trick so if the pronoun trick works it's a subject verb if the pronoun trick doesn't work it's a parallelism so let me demonstrate I'm going to take a singular pronoun and a plural pronoun and I'm going to test the answer choices with them I would say he is they are they have been and they were ah so there is a variation in singular and plural meaning it's going to be a subject verb agreement question and typically the answer that's right is the one that's different so I'm already leaning towards the is because it's the only singular answer choice how can we know for sure well up in the sentence here's my blank and I see a prepositional phrase of Sonic Booms that means the word right before it is my subject I'm going to cross off of Sonic booms and now I'm going to read it for engineers the elimination is one of the biggest challenges so since the subject is singular you need to pick a singular verb now I want you to try the next one so pause the video give this a try and then play the video again okay you should have had a minute to try this one out so again you see the answer choices they're verb tenses is it a subject verb agreement well let's find out I would say he brings they bring they have brought and then bringing I don't say he bringing or they bringing so I'm that one doesn't really count if you put it in the sentence that one's going to sound silly so we're just going to get rid of that one completely now when I look at it because there is a variation singular and plural I'm already thinking okay it's probably a here's my blank and again I see another prepositional phrase of the world's largest folk art festivals so I'm going to cross that off right before is the word one that means one is the subject so it would be one brings together artist because it's singular so that's how you tackle subject verb agreement all right now let's talk parallelism so if that pronoun trick does not hold and there's no variation in singular and plural you're probably on a parallelism question parallelism essentially requires you to understand the different verb tenses and how they're used and then to recognize in the text what verb tense they're already written in or they're using and make sure yours matches that so some of these things in this table are pretty obvious I mean Pres present tense you might say like he is that's pretty simple past tense you might say he was future tense you will say he will be now I want you to Star these two past perfect present perfect these are the ones that really mess students up these are the ones they're testing on the digital sat that they did not test on the paper test so first past perfect is something that's ongoing in the past and stops at some point in the past so to give you an example you would say he had been so you're looking for the word had that makes it in the past ongoing in the past but done in the past present perfect is ongoing in the past as well but it continues on in the present so you would say he has been so essentially you're looking for a has and that makes it present perfect um um one thing to note is that the word since typically starts a modifier on the SAT which is basically the introduction to a sentence um and that is a sign that you need to pick a present perfect verb so let's just do like a couple examples so you can get a sense of how to tackle this so as you can see the blank isn't until down here well so we're not going to read all of this because this is a grammar question we we don't really need context um what we're going to do now is recognize there's a modifier here that says today so that means it's present tense so all I need to do is say today Pac is considered the first video artist because I need it to be parallel with the modifier why don't you try one all right so same deal pause the video give this a try and then you can play it and see the solution all right so you should have had a chance to try this one out now you might have noticed the modifier in this case says since that time meaning it was going on in the past and it's still continuing on in the present that means we need to pick a present perfect verb so we have to go with has remained parallel to the modifier parallel to the modifier okay since that time is the modifier or the introduction to the sentence we need our verb tense to match that that's parallelism how do I know that it wasn't a subject verb agreement question well if I do the pronoun trick I could say he had remained he has remained he remained and he remains so I can use all of them in a singular context that's how I know I need to switch to parallelism for this okay another key thing if you want to dominate the grammar is you have to know your punctuation rules inside and out and there are key ones that the SAT will test on this new digital version so let's start by talking about the colon first things first with a colon you have to have a complete sentence or an independent clause on the left on the right hand side anything goes could be complete could be incomplete it could be a list but guys I don't want you to think a colon is just for lists because it's not I have so many students come to me and they just think that that's the only usage of it and I can promise you on this test they're probably not going to use a colon with a list that's just not how it works here but the biggest thing that I want you to understand is this side of the colon explains more about the statement made on the left so if a statement is made and then they go into more detail about it or describe more about it or explain more about it you probably need the colon let's talk about the semicolon the semicolon you need to have a complete sentence on both sides or an independent clause if you like to call it independent clause so basically a semicolon is like a fancy period it just um separates two complete sentences if you don't have two complete sentences you can't use a semicolon except there is one other usage of it that college board has been testing a lot lately I want you to be ready for this um especially if you're taking the test sometime in 2024 cuz I've noticed that this is trending where the semicolon can also be used to to separate items in a list so a way I like to think about it which is kind of interesting off to the side I'm going to draw a semicolon for you guys so here's my DOT here's my comma a semicolon can function like a period or it can function like a comma why would someone use semicolons to separate items in a list when they can just use commas well there's a couple reasons one is if the items in the list are super super long like lots of words so it's hard to tell you know if where the divisions are between the items second thing is if the items in the list already have commas within them for instance if I'm listing cities and I say Paris comma France London comma England it would be better for me to separate those cities and their countries with semicolons and not commas let's talk about the comma rule so the comma rule basically is is that a a comma cannot separate two complete sentences so if you have a complete sentence on both sides do not pick the comma however on this test sometimes what college board is doing is they're putting an and like a comma in an and or a comma in a butt a comma in some kind of Fanboys if they give you that then you can separate those two independent clauses and you're good to go so just be ready for that the last rule is that you cannot separate non-essential information by mixing and matching punctuation marks so if I have a non-essential piece of information which we talked about earlier I can't start it with a comma and then end it with a dash comma goes with commas dashes go with dashes okay so let's look at some punctuation questions and I'll give you some strategies first strategy and again this goes back to when you're on a grammar question I always want you to start by looking at the answer choices if you look at the answer choices this will give you a sense of what kind of question you are on so when I look at these answer choices I'm going o okay they give me a period semicolon comma I think I'm on a punctuation question but what's really great is two of those punctuation marks function the same exact way so because a comma or sorry because a semicolon and a period both separate two complete senses I'm going to cross them off right away that's your strategy number one if you're finding this video helpful so far by the way show me some love make sure you hit that like button below oh by the way if you wanted to work this one out then we have to basically read from here if you're trying to decide if there's a comma or no comma you have a couple options one strategy that I use with my students is I just have them read it out loud and listen to where they pause okay okay this works for maybe 75% of my students 25% have a tough time doing that but let's start by doing that first and you guys can determine if I'm pausing between writers and among or not so I have the high coolik poems of Thomas trans tromer which present nature and dream influence images in Cris spare language have earned the Swedish poet praise from leading contemporary writers among them Nigerian American essayist and novelist tesu Cole who has written that trans tromer Works contain a luminous Simplicity I definitely had to pause between writers and among so I would go with d which is the comma well we have to ask ourselves too why why is there a comma there okay well it's because that means this part right here among them Nigerian American essay and novelist tesu Cole because it's now between these two commas right here and right here it makes that part non-essential why is it non-essential because I already know enough from the context I know we're talking about leading contemporary writers so this is just extra information they're giving us an example of one of the leading contemporary writers but it's specific enough already I know what group they're talking about I don't necessarily need that to understand the sentence so essentially I could take that whole part out I could say have earned the Swedish poet praise from leading contemporary writers now the funny thing is this very last part is also a continuation uh explaining more about tesu Cole so really the whole green part and the whole yellow part that I just highlighted at the very end there is all non-essential we could end the sentence with writers but that explains why you need a comma there okay here is another strategy for you guys if you see a semicolon already in the sentence I want you to pick the semicolon especially if you notice the semicolon comes right before the word and if it comes before the word and they are certainly listing three things and using semicolons to separate the items so you're going to go with B because there's a semicolon there now just a heads up I have seen questions and well I saw one sorry I've seen one question where there were semicolons in the text and the answer was not semicolon and this was because there was already two semicolons in the text separating out the three pieces of information and it turned out on that question you actually needed a colon so that's another thing I want you to keep in mind a colon and semicolons can't exist in one sentence together what happened was the first part of the sentence made a statement then there was a colon and then they went on to explain more about it and they listed three things separated with semicolons so rule of thumb if you see one [Music] semicolon pick the semicolon especially if that one semicolon you see comes with an and if you see two semicolons they've already completed the separation of the three items in a list pick something else okay I had a student ask me well Laura will they ever list four items no no they will not they have never listed four items they always list three I hate to say never though I really hope I don't eat my words there but they've always historically listed three things so something to keep in mind okay strategy number three if you're trying to decide between a comma or a no comma first things first you want to determine if uh Claus is non-essential or not so for instance the way that they wrote C they made aluminum oxide non- essential now when I read it in there it says recently engineer EF of tampier University in Finland used the chemical compound aluminum oxide to make a glassy solid if I take out aluminum oxide that's a really important part of the sentence I don't know what chemical compound she's using so that is essential information now another thing to keep in mind is if you have a description before the name typically you don't need commas anyways I could read right through it so because I want to keep aluminum oxide in there because I can read right through that without pausing I don't need commas I'm going to go with d one other thing that you should keep in mind is let's just pretend you were struggling on this one and you were going between b and d and you just weren't sure which one to pick cuz sometimes students will overthink these comma placement questions if you're not sure pick the one with less commas in it picking the one with less commas in it will definitely give you a higher probability of getting the question right I promise you so play the odds if you were at a casino you want to give yourself the best odds of winning money right same here go with the one with no commas if you're not sure all right another strategy for punctuation is using majority rules for apostrophes some times apostrophes confuse some students I've worked with too so before we get into the actual strategy I think it is important for you to understand the difference between like brothers where the apostrophe is on the inside of the S versus Brothers where it's on the outside of the S okay so this one is a singular possessive so it basically means one brother is owning something like I would say my brother's toothbrush this one is a plural possessive so that basically means a group of brothers maybe there's two three four brothers they own something together and let's hope they don't own a toothbrush together cuz that's just gross maybe we would say the brother's lake house right so anyways that's what they test a lot on the SAT but um you can just get a little shyy and just do this really cool trick so when I look at the 4 answer choices I am going to just focus on the first word and I'm going to ask myself what two look the same what two look different so the two that look the same I'm going to keep that's B and D so I'm getting rid of a cuz that's a different stories I'm getting rid of C that's a different stories now I'm going to look at the second word events and I'm going to play the same game I'm going to say what two events look the same what two look different when I look at this A and B look the same C and D those events look different so I cross off D and so B must be the right answer this works 95% of the time so if you're stuck when all else fails go ahead and use majority rules for apostrophes okay I mentioned earlier in the video something about modifiers but we need to talk about modifiers again because they will test this as its own question and so so many students get burned by this so a modifier basically is introducing what the sentence is about to be talking about it has not mentioned the subject yet but it gives you an idea of what the subject is or what the subject's about so essentially when I read this modifier which says as the country with the most mega cities in the world comma right after that I need my subject I mean immediately after that the next word after this intro comma is going to be the subject now the subject is the country with the most mega cities so I need to pick a country so when I'm choosing between those three options I'm going to go with China that should be the next word why don't you guys try this next one so if it says arguably the most influential artwork of the renissance period blank what would you put in the blank if you pick the David you're right the David is an artwork so that's why it will be the subject because it goes with the modifier and what the modifier is describing the subject as okay Michelangelo is not artwork the David shape is not artwork that's its shape so we have to go with the David okay so these can get a little tricky for that reason some of the answer choices are going to sound really really good but only one of them is right you will know you're on a modifier example because you'll notice there will be a blank right after a comma and if it sounds like it's leading into something or introducing something you're definitely on a modifier question you'll also notice the answer choices look similar right like what they do is they make them all worded similarly to each other but they start the first word is different now why did I highlight research Robert Lo's argument and be that's because that would be the subject because we have this apostrophe here so really the focus is on the argument the argument is so the argument is going with the verb so really we have to decide is the subject researcher Robert Losi is it researcher Robert loi's argument is it domestication or is it the argument so when we read the modifier let's see what it says so the modifier says since on covering fragments of a 2,000-year-old reindeer training harness in Northern Siberia blank okay whatever the subject is is uncovering fragments can the argument uncover fragments nope can domestication uncover fragments nope can researcher Robert Lo's argument uncover fragments no the only subject that makes sense is researcher Robert Losi and that's why you have to go with a all right go ahead you try this example too pause the video all right you should have had a chance to try this example so the modifier is named in 1999 is one of the greatest achievements by a us chemist so it's one of the greatest achievements we need it to be a great achievement Julian is not a great achievement even though his mom might think so she's probably the only one so we're g to get rid of a in 1935 is not a great achievement if anything it was kind of a bad time I mean it was like the Great Depression so we should probably get rid of B Julian's 1935 synthesis could be a great achievement let's hold that would the alkaloid be a great achievement well the alkaloid is just a thing can I say calcium is a great achievement no so that doesn't make sense so the answer is C because the subject is the synthesis of the alkaloid which is an achievement all right guys that is it for today's video those are some grammar hacks tips and tricks to help you slay the grammar especially those tricky ones on module 2 go ahead and comment below and let me know what other things you need help with on the English cuz I just want to be able to give you guys as much strategies and approaches as possible if you're in a bit of a time crunch and you can't wait for my weekly videos to come out I would definitely recommend you sign up for my self-paced digital sat English course I already have over 300 students in the course they're doing phenomenally there's exclusive videos there's materials you can't get anywhere else and it really walks you through all the strategies and tips and tricks you need to get every type typ of English question right so I will link to the course up here just a heads up since you are a YouTube viewer of my channel I'm giving $50 off for you guys so just put the promo 50 off in at checkout and until next time guys happy prepping [Music]