This section of our ParaPro Study Guide will examine a broad range of common mistakes made in writing. As a paraprofessional, you need to be able to spot common grammar issues in your students’ work – and, of course, avoid making grammatical mistakes of your own.
Grammar Vs. Usage
It is important to note that our study guide has separate sections for grammatical, usage, and punctuation errors. Grammatical errors focus on parts of speech, capitalization, and sentence structure, whereas usage errors are commonly mixed up words, such as “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” Punctuation errors are what they sound like: errors in using commas, hyphens and dashes, apostrophes, periods, colons, semicolons, and exclamation and question marks. Usage and punctuation errors will be covered in the following units.
The following are common grammatical principles and rules to know before going into the ParaPro exam.
Subject-Verb Agreement
In English, our verbs change form depending on when the action occurred and what they are relating to. subject-verb agreement refers to pairing the correct verb with the subject.
If a subject is singular, the verb must be singular as well. “Sarah has to leave” has proper subject-verb agreement, but “All of the girls has to leave” does not. “Sarah” is a singular subject and needs the singular form of the verb “to have,” which would be “has.” “All of the girls” is plural (i.e. referring to more than one person), so we need to use the verb form “have” to agree in number with the subject.
Capitalization
Though it is easy to remember to capitalize words at the beginning of a sentence, some rules of capitalization can get tricky.
Proper nouns should always be capitalized. Names, places, titles, languages, days, and months are all proper nouns. This is easy when writing someone’s name, but there are a few caveats.
Names and titles such as “President Joe Biden” are capitalized, but if you are just using the word “president” without referring to a specific person or including his name, leave it lowercase. This is because titles are proper nouns when they refer to a person, but they are not proper nouns when just referring to a general position, as in the sentence, “Running for president is no easy task.”
Just as the beginning of a sentence is capitalized, the beginning of a quotation should be capitalized – but only if the quote is a complete sentence. Look at the difference between the following examples:
The teacher paused and said, “Well, I’m not so sure about that.”
The student was disappointed in the teacher’s answer, as he felt there isn’t anything an educator should be “not so sure about.”
The first example is a full quote, so it begins with a capital letter. The second example is just a short reference of what someone said; it is not preceded or followed by a dialogue tag, but is rather a part of a larger sentence. Thus, the quotation is not capitalized.
Lastly, you should always capitalize the pronoun “I.”
Verb Tense
Verbs are the only parts of speech that change forms, or tenses, based on context. For example, the infinitive verb “to dance” changes based on the subject and the time it occurred: “dance,” “dances,” “danced,” and “dancing” are all different tenses of the same verb.
Earlier, we learned that a sentence must have subject-verb agreement, but it also has to be in the correct tense, whether that be past, present, or future. Let’s continue the example of “dance.”
“I danced last night” is in past tense.
“I will dance tomorrow” is in future tense.
Both “We dance” and “We are dancing” are in present tense.
There are more complex aspects to tense, including simple and perfect tenses, which can be used alongside past, present, and future tense.
Simple tense is just like it sounds: it is the verb being simply used, with no additions. Perfect tense is used when an action refers to more than one point in time. Perfect tense can often be identified by adding an auxiliary verb.
Thus, “I danced with him” is simple past tense, but “I have danced with him before” is past perfect tense, as it adds the auxiliary verb “have.” Similarly, “I have danced for more than ten years” is present perfect, as the action is currently ongoing but also happened in the past, as shown by the auxiliary verb “have.”
Misplaced and dangling modifiers
A modifier is, predictably, a word or phrase that modifies another word. To be grammatical, your modifier must be next to what it is modifying. Otherwise, your sentence can get confusing.
If you were to write “Like all elephants, I saw one that was giant yet silent,” you have misplaced your modifier and made it sound like you were the elephant, seeing just like all elephants see. The proper sentence structure would be “Like all elephants, the one I saw was giant yet silent.”
A dangling modifier is when a modifier describes something that is not in the sentence, as in “Having finished dinner, the dishes needed to be cleaned.” Who or what finished dinner? We assume it was somebody, but it isn’t directly stated in the sentence. A more correct sentence would be “Having finished dinner, we turned our attention to the dirty dishes.”
Subject Vs. Object Pronouns
Why is “I gave the book to he” incorrect? Why is it so hard to remember when to use “you and I” rather than “you and me”?
The answer lies in subject and object pronouns. We use different words depending on if the noun being replaced by a pronoun is functioning as the subject or the object.
Subject pronouns include “he,” “she,” “we,” and “I.” Object pronouns include “him,” “her,” “us,” and “me.”
In “John threw the ball,” John is the subject – the person who the sentence is about – and the ball is the object – the thing being acted upon. Thus, “John” would be replaced with the subject pronoun “he.” “Him through the ball” is incorrect.
There are also possessive pronouns which are used to indicate possession of something. Possessive pronouns include “his,” “hers,” “theirs,” and “its,” as in “the bird left its nest” or “that bag is hers.”
Questions on the ParaPro exam will usually give you a sentence or paragraph where a grammatical error exists; the questions do not ask for definitions or explanations of grammatical concepts. You simply must figure out which answer option includes a mistake, as in the following examples.
Example 1
For the following sentence, select the option that contains an error in grammatical construction, punctuation, or word choice:
Dixie plays softball yesterday with her best friend, Jasmine. After the game, they got some ice cream and both ate different flavors. When they arrived home, they both agreed they would go again tomorrow.
- plays
- ate
- arrived
- they would go
This is an example of improper verb tense. The key word here is “yesterday,” which tells us that the verb should be in past tense. The present tense “plays” should be changed to the past tense “played.” The other verbs are correctly written in past or future tense, as “ate” and “arrived” refer to yesterday and “they would go” refers to their future plans for tomorrow.
Example 2
My friend Lisa likes to cook. Her favorite meal to make is lasagna. I enjoys going over there every Saturday to taste her delicious meal. Next time I have her over, I am going to make my favorite meal for her, chicken marsala.
- likes
- to make
- I enjoys
- I have her
The correct answer is (C), “I enjoys.” This is a mistake in subject-verb agreement. “I” is a singular noun, so it needs the singular verb “enjoy.”
Our review test below will help you check your understanding of common grammatical errors and concepts, including subject-verb agreement, capitalization, tense, and sentence structure.