Elementary Concepts

[rssread]

Hello All,

Call me stupid, call me anything. Still I admit I need to get better with the grammar basics. So please share your knowledge in most basic terms with some good examples which always help in making out ...what is what:

How to determine which is the subject, which is the object, what is adverb, what is adjective, what is adjective clause, what is adverbial clause etc

Thanks

[beatthegmat]

Hi rssread:

A basic American English grammar book will teach you those things...but keep in mind that you don't need to know all the rules of grammar to perform well on GMAT verbal (although I would encourage everyone to study grammar for sheer knowledge of the English language).

Have you looked at Spidey's Sentence Correction Notes and Sahil's Notes on the Sentence Correction area of this forum? These guides may be a good start for you.

This may be a good thread you have started. Perhaps the community can use this thread to share our collective knowledge of American English grammar...

[beatthegmat]

Let's start by discussing what we mean by the subject of a sentence. I like this definition provided by the Blue Book of Grammar:

A subject is the noun or pronoun that performs the verb.

Here are some example:

• Eric ran.
• The police captured the criminal.
• Mistakes were made.

The subject performs the action in a sentence.

[aim-wsc]

i shouldnt put this post here, sir. but some words
bother me here.

'American English grammar'
is that term really exists?
i heard of American spellings/American English -

American usage.
but not American Grammar.
And please correct me if i am wrong, sir, that all

standard ( recognised) English are acceptable.
Here, i am concern with writing section of GMAT

.....be it British English or an American or any other.

[beatthegmat]

I may be wrong using the term "American English Grammar" but there are some differences between American English and British English (the other popular variety of English), beyond just spelling:

https://esl.about.com/library/weekly/aa110698.htm

[rssread]

I appreciate the replies by beatthegmat and aim-wsc. However I think we are getting off the topic here by focussing what's there in "American English" and what is in " British English". Lets focus here what we need for "GMAT English"

Please post more replies to original question.

Thanks All

[aim-wsc]

no issues.
so back to the topic.

Grammar.

dear rssfeed (nice name btw)
we are sailing in the same boat. Even i am not so confident about my grammar and word usage.

can you tell us the geographical region where you belong?

I am asking this because many persons joined this website do not have English as their first lahgauge.

so this forum could help non- english speaking persons, well.

ok i think i am going too off track.

CUT IT.

what my point is non-english-speakers usually bump with idioms and phrases and general usage of English langauge.
they simply do word to word translation of their native langauge....

this can be overcome by reading standard newspapers and listening to news channels.

[rssread]

English is not my first Laungage. It's not my native language. I am from Central India.

I am doing the news paper reading as well as news watching/listening for sometime.However I don't feel confident enough with Verbal. I am fine with Quant (Both PS & DS). You are right to some extent about translating from Hindi-English and then framing the sentence for day-to-day speaking.

[aim-wsc]

[quote="beatthegmat"]I may be wrong using the term "American English Grammar" but there are some differences between American English and British English (the other popular variety of English), beyond just spelling:

https://esl.about.com/library/weekly/aa110698.htm[/quote]

ok i couldnt resist to post it here. though it should not be posted here in Study section but the ...
ok i m just sending the link to Lounge section.
this is very very nice n funny article.
https://www.beatthegmat.com/viewtopic.php?p=731#731
just check this out in Lounge section.

[dollyr]

Hi

Agree grammar is difficult for most of us.But lets try to concentrate on what we really need to know about now for GMAT

Subject: The subject is what is being talked about in the sentence it might be a place,thing,idea or person.

Verb: Describes the subject or the state of the subject

In GMAT the SC involves Subject -verb agreement questions which means

if the subject is singular the verb is singular

Ex: He is Driving
Subject: He
Verb: Is

if the subject is plural the verb is plural

Ex:They are talking
Subject: They
Verb: are

Check for this if there is any mismatchin the subject-verb agreement, that is the error