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Playbook

Spotting Errors — Sentence improvement

10 q. Full-sentence underline; pick the best rewrite from 4 options. Tests register + conciseness as much as grammar.

questions in the bank
10
tagged HARD
10%
subtopic(s) covered
1
worked examples
0

When you’ll see it

A full sentence with one part underlined; pick the best rewrite of that part from 4 options (one of which is the original, unchanged).

How this question type works

10 q. Distinct from the other Errors subtopics because (a) the underline is a longer phrase, not a single word or short segment, and (b) one of the options is 'No change needed' — making the No-Error trap relevant here too.

The improvement is usually conciseness + register: the original might be 'very different than the other' which is improved to 'very different from the other'. Or it might be parallelism: 'enjoys reading, swimming, and to run' improved to 'enjoys reading, swimming, and running'.

Read all four options before deciding. The improvement is the option that fixes the violation *without introducing a new one*. A common trap: an option that fixes the original error but creates a tense mismatch elsewhere.

The sub-skills

The rules and habits that decide whether you get this question right.

  • Conciseness as default

    Between two grammatically-correct options, prefer the shorter one. NDA's expected register is formal-concise.

  • Parallelism check

    When a list appears, all items must share grammatical form. -ing, -ing, -ing — not -ing, -ing, infinitive.

  • Read all options including 'no change'

    If the original sentence is correct, the answer is 'no change needed' — don't change for the sake of changing.

Traps to expect

Distractor shapes specific to this playbook. The page-wide Traps section covers the bank-level patterns.

  • Fix-and-introduce

    An option fixes the original error but adds a new one (tense, S-V, preposition). Check the whole sentence after substitution.

  • Synonym swap with no improvement

    An option just swaps the underlined word for a synonym — same meaning, same correctness, just different vocabulary. Not an improvement.

Drill every spotting errors — sentence improvement question

10 questions from the bank, scoped to the named subtopic.

Drill the 10 questions

Related playbooks

Often paired with this one — drill these next if you found the worked examples above tractable.