Passage excerpt:
CBS hoped to draw on highbrow viewers who were more interested in serious literary material,
than in the songs and jokes that dominated most radio programs.
Options:
a. NO CHANGE
b. serious, literary material, than
c. serious literary, material than
d. serious literary material than
When students learn about the mechanics and usage of the FL, they are at the same time
learning/reinforcing the mechanics and usage of their native language (L1). For example, in Spanish,
question and explanation marks are used both at the beginning and the end of the sentence. Therefore,
learning Spanish as an FL helps students pay particular attention to the use of the question or
explanation marks in the L1.
The grammar and usage questions test understanding about the use of apostrophes; agreement
between subject and verb, pronouns and antecedents, and modifiers and the word they modify; use of
appropriate verb forms; comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs; and idiomatic usage. The
following example measures understanding of verb form, which was taken from the ACT official web
site. The test taker has to decide the best verb form of the verb to sit in the sentence (the best answer is
c).
Passage excerpt:
I grew up with buckets, shovels, and nets waiting by the back door; hip-waders hanging in the
closet; tide table charts covering the refrigerator door; and a microscope was sitting on the
kitchen table.
Options:
a. NO CHANGE b. would sit c. sitting d. sat
French and Spanish are the two most popular
foreign languages among high school students.
Learners of French and Spanish need to become
aware of the close relationship between subject
and verb so they agree in person and number.
These two languages have a productive
conjugational system as opposed to English.
According to the online dictionary of Real
Academia Española (n.d.), a verb can have up to
seven different forms in every tense depending
on the pronoun (yo, tú, vos, él/ella/usted,
nosotros, vosotros, ellos/ellas/ustedes), which
renders up to 67 different conjugated forms in
the three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and
imperative). The French conjugational system
as a whole is not as productive as that of the
Spanish language, but it has six different forms
for each tense depending on the pronoun (je,
tu, il/elle/on, nous, vous, ils/elles), which
renders over 40 conjugated forms in the
different moods. For example, a student paying
attention to the s X