Product Description

Proficiency in fundamental English grammar is required by all high school students who hope to score well on their college entrance exams. This brush-up and review book focuses on improving students’ verbal skill and fluency. The opening chapters summarize grammatical terms, demonstrate their functions, and focus on the 24 most common problems in grammar and usage that show up repeatedly on the SAT, ACT, and other exams. Prominent among these pitfalls are subject-verb agreement, parallel structure, incomplete sentences, choice of pronouns, and faulty punctuation. This book gives students a productive approach to test taking, paying special attention to SAT grammar and usage questions, common question types on the ACT’s English section, and grammar tests that students must take for high school graduation. The book includes many sample questions with fully explained answers, and offers detailed instruction on answering the SAT and ACT essay questions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #133243 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

From the Inside Flap
(back cover)
Understanding grammar fundamentals is a must when you take college entrance exams. This brush-up and review book will help you find correct answers and improve your verbal skill and fluency. It covers all aspects of grammar, with special focus on the 24 most common problems that show up repeatedly in students’ answers on the SAT, ACT, and other exams. Among them are . . .

Customer Reviews

Not recommended
I needed a book to help a high school student review for some basic proficiency tests in sentence and grammar correction. This book looked promising at first glance, especially with the Barron's logo emblazoned on it.

However, when working through it, some examples were cumbersome or unclear, including one in which a pronoun was explained as referring back to an "antecedent" which, if re-inserted in place of the pronoun, would have rendered the sentence nonsensical. In fact, the pronoun had a completely different grammatical purpose in that sentence. From the explanation following the example, it appears that the author might have created a sentence to fit his topic, then italicized the wrong pronoun by mistake, and, finally, must have just gone ahead with the full explanation using the incorrect word as the starting point, trying to make the explanation fit it anyway.

The exercise sentences were poorly written, often including additional errors to fix that had nothing to do with the subject just presented, and no prior foundation in the workbook. In some cases, it felt like someone had to work really hard to come up with "just a couple more sentences" for the book, without really thinking through them. In the answer key, some corrections were shown as necessary for some sentences which, in my opinion, were completely acceptable without changes.

A student working through this book on his/her own could end up making their editing more complicated than it needs to be. And, in at least one example, they could learn a concept completely incorrectly. I can hardly believe the author has a doctorate in this subject.

Do not buy this book!
As a SAT and ACT tutor for several years, I was looking for a book to supplement some of the fine materials from Kaplan and Princeton Review. This book is not it! Rife with errors, it seems like the author has very little idea of what actual ACT and SAT questions are like. I'm astounded that parts of this book were ever read by an editor! Students who use this book blindly are likely to spend unnecessary time reading through grammatical rules that will never be seen on an actual test. It's unfortunate there are no supplemental books for the ACT's English section, other than this book, but that does not make this book worthwhile.