Grammar and usage conventions: applying the conventions of standard English that the EOC tests most often, including subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement and clear reference, consistent verb tense, and correct use of modifiers, on a TNReady English I or II editing item, and on the essay.

What this skill is asking

Grammar and usage conventions are the rules of standard English, and the TNReady English I and II language items test the ones students most often get wrong: subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement and clear reference, consistent verb tense, and correct use of modifiers. These appear as editing items ("which revision corrects the error") on a draft passage, and the same conventions are scored on the essay under the writing rubric's third dimension. The transferable skill is proofreading with a checklist of the high-frequency errors, rather than reading for sense and hoping mistakes jump out. Knowing exactly what to look for, and the trick that exposes each error, turns editing from guesswork into a reliable scan.

Agreement: subjects, verbs, and pronouns

Agreement errors are the most commonly tested, and each has a reliable trick.

To check subject-verb agreement, find the true subject and mentally delete the words between it and the verb; the agreement then becomes obvious. To check pronoun reference, ask whether each pronoun points to exactly one noun. If two nouns precede a pronoun and either could be meant, the sentence is ambiguous and needs rewriting so only one is possible. These are the errors the EOC plants most often, so scan for them first.

Tense and modifiers

These four areas, agreement, reference, tense, and modifiers, cover the large majority of EOC usage items, and they are exactly the errors that lower the writing rubric's Conventions and Clarity dimension. A student who proofreads for this short list catches most mistakes that cost marks, in both the editing items and the essay.

Catching usage errors on an item

Try this

Q1. Why is "the list of items are on the desk" incorrect? [Recall]

• Cue. The subject is "list" (singular), not "items". The phrase "of items" comes between the subject and the verb but does not change the subject's number, so the verb should be singular: "the list of items is on the desk".

Q2. Rewrite to fix the dangling modifier: "Running late, the bus was missed." [Short explanation]

• Cue. As written, the bus seems to be running late. Fix it by giving the modifier a logical subject: "Running late, I missed the bus." Now the person, not the bus, is running late.