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Course: Digital SAT Reading and Writing > Unit 5
Lesson 4: FSS: Verb formsVerb form — Worked example
Learn the best way to approach a verb form question on the SAT. You'll know to look for verb form errors if 1) different choices use different verb tenses (past/present/future), or 2) some choices add or remove helping verbs. Use the context to figure out which verb form belongs in the blank.. Created by David Rheinstrom.
Want to join the conversation?
- well this one is simple though. in the real test, how to choose the right option could be a whole lot harder and since will require more time, so does anyone knows how to do it faster?(4 votes)
- What is the DSAT? Is it a test? If so is it required for college applications?(1 vote)
- The DSAT is the digital (D) [and new] version of the SAT. Yes, it is a test. Most colleges require that you take the SAT to apply, but it depends on which college you want to apply to. You'll have to look up the specifics for your college.(3 votes)
- it was easy , but when question forms in general format it becomes confusing for me(2 votes)
- Are there questions in the DSAT where distinctions must be made between verb aspects in these questions? if so, can someone share some good resources for that?(1 vote)
- Where can I get full practice tests other than bluebook(0 votes)
- There are some practice tests in Princeton Review books(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] Hey there, test takers. Let's take a look at this question from the reading and writing test. "If simple sugars such as
ribose and glycolaldehyde blank Earth from elsewhere
and survived impact, a possibility astrophysicist
Nicolle Zellner outlined in a 2020 study, the sugars could have
reacted with other molecules that were already present on the planet to form the nucleotides that are the structural
components of RNA and DNA. Which choice completes the
text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?" All right, and the answer
choices are all different forms of the verb to reach. If you wanna give this question a try before I work through it with you, pause the video now and go for it. And now we'll do it together. Space sugar, let's go! So the question stem, this part here, tells us that this is a grammar question. That's what "conventions
of Standard English" means. And from the choices, we can
figure out what's being tested. Something to do with verbs, right? And so, let's do a quick check. Is this a subject-verb agreement question? The subject of the
sentence is sugars, plural. So are all the choices compatible with a plural subject? Let's see. Sugars had reached. Sugars are reaching. Sugars reach. Sugars will reach. No subject-verb disagreement there. And all the choices offer
different helping verbs and endings of the main verb. So that means this question
is about verb form. Verb form has a few different facets. Things like tense and aspect. Verb tense and aspect are all about when a verb is happening. Tense tells us if we're
talking about past, present, or future, and aspect is even more specific. Is the action still happening? Did it just finish? Will it
finish happening in the future? Stuff like that. Your job for these
questions is to determine the most logical form of
a verb for its sentence. I don't want us to get
too in the weeds here. I could spend weeks poking
at the fine distinctions of verb form, and that's extremely not what we're about right now. I want you to be able to quickly identify the right verb form and move
on to the next question. We can contemplate verb forms
for fun some other time. The good news is is this. You already know this stuff, even if you don't know
the grammar labels for it. Watch, here's as grammatically
incorrect sentence. "Last year, I am visiting
relatives in Detroit, Michigan." That probably sounds weird to you. I'm talking about something
that happened last year. Shouldn't I be using last year verb forms? Let me do it correctly. "Last year, I visited relatives
in Detroit, Michigan." So, am visiting became visited. A great way to keep an eye
out for these questions is to look at the tense
of the helper verbs. Those little words like
and or was or have or had. Let's talk about strategy. So, you've identified a verb
forms question. Now what? First step, check the time. Passages can give you context clues about when an action is happening. Other relevant verbs
conjugated in a given tense or years or events from the past. If you see a verb among the choices that doesn't make sense
with that time frame, knock it out of the running. Next step, make sure the tenses match. This applies to the
little helper verbs too. If you're looking for past tense, and you see an is rather
than a was or a were, you can eliminate that choice. That's pretty much it. Keep those two things in your mind as we return to the question. I've already read this passage aloud, so let's just look for
other verbs in the passage. Okay, so we've got survived, outlined, could have reacted, and were. We should focus on the
verbs from the space impact narrative and not outlined which is sort of outside that story. All these verbs tell me that these sugars showed up in the past. So, let's see if there are any choices that use past tense. Had reached, past. Are reaching, present. Reach, present. Will reach, future. Okay, so, we've only got one choice that puts the arrival of
the sugars in the past, and that's choice A. Note that the SAT
doesn't offer two choices in the past tense. We don't have to choose between
reached and have reached. Sweet, that's it. Question done. One top tip here for
this sort of question. Look for context clues. You want clues about time period or other relevant verbs. And this question was straight forward. There was another verb that
shared the same subject and it told us we were
looking for a past tense verb. Okay. Good luck out there,
test takers, you've got this.