Grammar Skill Drills — Form, Structure & Sense
Twenty-four items, six sub-skills, answer and reason immediately under each
13 min read
MERIDIAN™ · © 2026 · original practice items (not real SAT questions). Not affiliated with or endorsed by the College Board. SAT® is a trademark of the College Board.
How to use this. The second half of the blocked drill. Same rules as the Boundaries set: one sub-skill at a time, four items each, reasoning revealed the moment you answer, three of four to advance — counting your first answer on each item, not the one you reached after a retry.
The habit that carries this whole document. Before you look at the sentence, look at what varies across the four choices. Four choices differing in was / were / is / are is subject–verb agreement. Four differing in its / it's / their is possessives. Four differing in the shape of a final phrase is parallelism. The test announces the rule in the answer choices, and reading them first turns "which sounds right" into "which rule applies".
Then strike out the noise. Cross off every prepositional phrase and every non-essential clause. What is left is the true subject — and the true subject is what agreement is decided by.
SUB-SKILL 1 · SUBJECT–VERB AGREEMENT
Check yourself
17. The box of yellowed letters and faded photographs ____ discovered behind a false wall during the renovation.
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18. Neither the curator nor the two assistants ____ able to explain the gap in the accession records.
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19. Each of the seventeen soil samples ____ tested twice, once on site and once in the laboratory.
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20. Among the manuscripts recovered from the flooded basement ____ a letter that was never sent.
SUB-SKILL 2 · PRONOUNS
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21. The committee published ____ findings after a year of closed hearings.
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22. Neither of the two proposals met ____ stated deadline.
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23. The prize was shared between Dr. Okafor and ____.
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24. The engineer ____ designed the bridge later refused to certify the repairs.
SUB-SKILL 3 · VERB FORM AND TENSE
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25. By the time the survey team reached the valley in 1974, the glacier ____ nearly a kilometre.
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26. Since 1998 the observatory ____ more than four thousand near-Earth asteroids.
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27. The bacterium, first isolated from a hot spring in Wyoming in 1966, ____ the basis of a technique now used in every genetics laboratory.
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28. If the alloy ____ cooled more slowly, the crystals would have grown considerably larger.
SUB-SKILL 4 · MODIFIER PLACEMENT
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29. Written in a Milanese prison over eleven months, ____
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30. Having sailed for eleven weeks without sight of land, ____
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31. Which choice places the modifier correctly?
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32. Reinforced with steel cables in the year after the earthquake, ____
SUB-SKILL 5 · PLURALS AND POSSESSIVES
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33. The two ____ testimony contradicted itself on every material point.
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34. ____ orbit is nearly circular, which is unusual among bodies that far from the Sun.
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35. Several ____ nests were mapped along the same half-mile stretch of river.
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36. The journal published three ____ accounts of the same eclipse, and no two agreed.
SUB-SKILL 6 · PARALLELISM AND COMPARISON
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37. The programme trains volunteers to identify native grasses, to record their locations, and ____
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38. The annual rainfall in the coastal region is far greater than ____
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39. The device is designed not only to measure ambient temperature but also ____
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40. Unlike the earlier prototypes, ____
SCORE YOURSELF
| Sub-skill | Items | Gate |
|---|---|---|
| Subject–verb agreement | 17–20 | 3 of 4 |
| Pronouns | 21–24 | 3 of 4 |
| Verb form and tense | 25–28 | 3 of 4 |
| Modifier placement | 29–32 | 3 of 4 |
| Plurals and possessives | 33–36 | 3 of 4 |
| Parallelism and comparison | 37–40 | 3 of 4 |
Below the gate anywhere: back to that rule in the Grammar Ruleset Vault, then the matching block of the Grammar Practice Bank.
At the gate everywhere, and at the gate on all four Boundaries sub-skills: you are ready for the Unit Test. Take it timed, in one sitting, on a screen.
REFERENCE CARD — FORM, STRUCTURE & SENSE
| Rule | The test |
|---|---|
| Subject–verb agreement | Strike prepositional phrases; the subject is what is left |
| Neither…nor | Verb agrees with the nearer subject |
| Each, every, either, neither, one | Always singular |
| Inverted sentences | Turn it around before deciding the verb |
| Collective nouns | Singular body, singular pronoun |
| Its / it's, their / they're | If it expands to two words, it is not a possessive |
| Pronoun case | After a preposition, use the object form; drop the other name and listen |
| Past perfect | The earlier of two past events |
| Present perfect | Started in the past, still running — since, for, over the past |
| Past hypothetical | "would have" pairs with "had been" |
| Opening participial phrase | Whatever follows the comma is what did the action |
| Possessives | Make it plural first, then add the apostrophe |
| Possessive pronouns | Never take an apostrophe — the opposite of nouns |
| Parallelism | Match the grammatical form of the items already in the list |
| Comparison | Compare like with like — that of, those of |
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Grammar Practice Bank
68 original Standard English Conventions questions — by sub-skill & difficulty
26 min