Language Usage Test
(60 items, 15 minutes)
The Language Usage Test contains 18 to 20 sentences, each with several underlined portions. You will decide whether each underlined part is correct or incorrect. The test measures your skill levels in the following areas.
- Punctuation. Determining appropriate end-of-sentence punctuation and use of the comma, colon, semicolon, quotation marks, parentheses, and hyphen.
- Grammar. Recognizing subject-verb agreement of pronouns and their antecedents; identifying proper use of pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.
- Sentence Structure. Identifying relationships between and among sentence clauses; identifying dangling or misplaced modifiers, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, comma splices, and sentence combinations.
- Capitalization and Spelling. Recognizing proper capitalization and spelling.
- Logic and Organization. Recognizing the logical organization and sequencing of ideas, cause-and-effect relationships, relevance of ideas, and relationships among ideas in a sentence.
Language Usage Sample Questions
Directions: This unit consists of sentences, each having underlined parts. Some underlined parts are correct as they are; others are incorrect. Incorrect parts involve common errors in the use of the English language. For each underlined part, mark "C" if it is correct and "I" if incorrect. You should assume that any part of a sentence which is not underlined is grammatically correct.
ne
2 |
wspaper article, the demand for gardeners and |
| landscape designers |
,
3 |
should grow steadily. |
| My teenage children assure |
of
4 |
me that rock |
| music |
,
5 |
although now over thirty, |
has
6 |
not been slowed down by its "old age." |
|
Answers:
| 1. C |
2. C |
3. I |
4. I |
5. C |
6. C |
