Grammar Basics in GMAT Exams

Wondering where your grammar basics in GMAT exams are tested? Well, of the four main categories — Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, Integrated Reasoning and Analytical Writing — the verbal section is where your basic English grammar for GMAT is tested. Your grammar, vocabulary, your ability to comprehend words and sentences and more, are evaluated through three types of questions — Reading Comprehension, Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning. Hence, it’s imperative that you are thorough with  basic GMAT grammar topics so that you do exceptionally well in this section.

In this article, we have listed down all the basic GMAT grammar topics that you are expected to be well versed with. They are:

• Modifiers
• Subject verb agreement
• Verb Tense
• Idioms and Idiomatic Expression
• Pronoun agreement
• Parallelism
• Articles
• Phrases and Clauses
• Parts of Speech – Active to Passive, Direct and Indirect
• Basic Sentence structure – Nouns, Adjectives and Pronouns

Most often your competency in grammar is usually tested in the sentence correction segment. The questions you are asked in this segment will have a sentence partly underlined and you would be presented with five answer choices to replace the underlined section. Your answer choice must be grammatically correct, logical and concise.

There are certain types of sentence correction questions that are frequently asked in the GMAT exam. They are : 

• Proper Verb Tense – Verbs have many tenses like the simple past, simple present and simple future, they also have progressive tenses and perfect tenses. Many times these involve auxiliary verbs as well. You will need to be aware of when these verbs are used and in which context and identify when there are mistakes.
• Illogical Comparison – These are comparisons made with things that make no sense in context with each other or they make no sense grammatically either. For example – Alexis loves shopping more than her brother. The sentence should actually be – Alexis loves to shop more than her brother does.
• Dangling Modifiers  –  You will need to identify the distinctions between different types of modifiers. For example – adjectives and other noun modifiers, adverbs and other verb modifiers, vital and non-vital modifiers.
• Subject Verb Agreement – Another sentence correction question type, where you will have to ensure that the subject of the sentence matches with its verb. For example – this box of chocolates belong downstairs. However the correct form is – this box of chocolates belongs downstairs.
• Pronoun Usage – The name is self explanatory; the GMAT is well known to test candidates on proper pronoun usage. The correct pronouns must match with their antecedents. For example – Mark took off his coat, where Mark is the antecedent for his.
• Idioms – These are common phrases used in English which involve prepositions. The Sentence correction questions generally test more than one of these grammar errors.

We hope you got an overview of the basic GMAT grammar topics that  you should be thorough with to ace the verbal section of the exams. It’s not as difficult as it might sound, all you need to do is practice efficiently. You can also download some basic English grammar for GMAT pdfs online to help with your practice. Also developing a habit of reading helps improve your grammar and vocabulary.  We hope this helps with your GMAT preparation.

Good Luck!

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