TOEFL Skill (Structure and Written Expression)

SKILL 1                        BE SURE THE SENTENCE HAS A SUBJECT AND A VERB

You know that a sentence in English should have a subject and a verb. The most common types of problems that you will encounter in the Structure section of the TOEFL test have to do with subjects and verbs: perhaps the sentence is missing either the subject or the verb or both, or perhaps the sentence has an extra subject or verb.

Example I

____ was backed up for miles on the freeway.

(A) Yesterday

(B) In the morning

(C) Traffic

(D) Cars

In this example you should notice immediately that there is a verb (was), but there is no subject. Answer (C) is the best answer because it is a singular subject that agrees with the singular verb was. Answer (A), yesterday, and answer (B), in the morning, are not subjects, so they are not correct. Although answer (D), cars, could be a subject, it is not correct because cars is plural and it does not agree with the singular verb was.

Example II

Engineers____ for work on the new space program.

(A) necessary

(B) are needed

(C) hopefully

(D) next month

In this example you should notice immediately that the sentence has a subject (engineers),

and that there is no verb. Because answer (B), are needed, is a verb, it is the best answer.

Answers (A), (C), and (D) are not verbs, so they are not correct.

Example III

The boy _____ going to the movies with a friend.

(A) he is

(B) he always was

(C) is relaxing

(D) will be

This sentence has a subject (boy) and has part of a verb (going); to be correct, some form of the verb be is needed to make the sentence complete. Answers (A) and (B) are incor-rect because the sentence already has a subject (boy) and does not need the extra subject he. Answer (C) is incorrect because relaxing is an extra verb part that is unnecessary be-cause of going. Answer (D) is the best answer; will be together with going is a complete verb.

The following chart oudines what you should remember about subjects and verbs:

SUBJECT AND VERBS :

A sentence in English must have at least one subject and one verb.

SKILL 2                        BE CAREFUL OF APPOSITIVES

Appositives can cause confusion in the Structure section of the TOEFL test because an appositive can be mistaken for the subject of a sentence. An appositive is a noun that comes before or after another noun and has the same meaning.

Sally, the best student in the class, got an A on the exam.

In this example Sally is the subject of the sentence and the best student in the class can easily be recognized as an appositive phrase because of the noun student and because of the commas. The sentence says that Sally and the best student in the class are the same person. Note that if you leave out the appositive phrase, the sentence still makes sense (Sally got an A on the exam).

The following example shows how an appositive can be confused with the subject of

a sentence in the Structure section of the TOEFL test.

Example I

____, George, is attending the lecture.

(A) Right now

(B) Happily

(C) Because of the time

(D) My friend

In this example you should recognize from the commas that George is not the subject of the

sentence. George is an appositive. Because this sentence still needs a subject, the best answer is (D), my friend. Answers (A), (B), and (C) are incorrect because they are not subjects.

The next example shows that an appositive does not always come after the subject;

an appositive can also come at the beginning of the sentence.

Example II

____, Sarah rarely misses her basketball shots.

(A) An excellent basketball player

(B) An excellent basketball player is

(C) Sarah is an excellent basketball player

(D) Her excellent basketball play

In this example you can tell that Sarah is the subject and misses is the verb because there is no comma separating them. In the space you should put an appositive for Sarah, and Sarah is an excellent basketball player, so answer (A) is the best answer. Answers (B) and (C) are not correct because they each contain the verb is, and an appositive does not need a verb. Answer (D) contains a noun, play, that could possibly be an appositive, but play is not the same as Sarah, so this answer is not correct.

The following chart outlines the key information that you should remember about appositives:

APPOSITIVES :

An appositive is a noun that comes before or after another noun and is generally set off from the noun with commas. If a word is an appositive, it is not the subject. The following appositive structures are both possible in English.

S                                 APP,                             V

Tom,        a really good mechanic,      is fixing the car.

APP,                            S                     V

A really good mechanic,      Tom      is fixing the car.