General US English Sentence Structure MCQs

1. Her boyfriend and she strolled leisurely on the beach and admired the sand castles left behind by local children

2. I didn't lie to my mother; I merely participated in a campaign of misinformation that was started by my brother.

3. .... the bride leaned over and whispered to me that she was having second thoughts.

4. Which statement about absolute phrases is false?

5. Because Joe is a tennis instructor, some of our weekend guests expected him to give free lessons, while others simply pestered him for free advice.

6. The police stood guard over the smoking ruins of the town, their senses alert to any sign of looters.

7. Which statement about phrases is false?

8. Coordinating conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions are all types of .... that are used to connect ideas and aid coherence within and between sentences.

9. Trying to sell that lemon of a car has become a lesson in futility.

10. To hear Martha tell it, living with her in-laws is a complete nightmare.

11. Everybody on that soccer team should ask himself a few important questions and set his own goals before the season begins.

12. My neighbor, a tall man with knobby knees, had a bad habit of chasing his dog as the dog chased the cat, resulting in a rather ridiculous display of circular motion.

13. Dependent, or subordinate, clauses ____

14. After a whole day of careening around on that bumpy road beside the railroad tracks, I can barely keep my hands and knees from shaking.

15. Being an algebra teacher with a penchant for numerical complexities, I love to decipher challenging equations after my morning shower and before going to bed.

16. A .... comes at the beginning of .... and establishes the relationship between that clause and the rest of the sentence.

17. At long last, the silent and snowy road led us to our snug home in the mountains.

18. The committee gave our marketing department an award for excellence.

19. The girl who bought the pearl earrings recently went to Paris for the fashion shows.

20. Before Ms. Allman became head of plastics for the toy company, she was a cosmetic surgeon.

21. A complex sentence contains ..... .

22. I have deep respect and admiration for Texas rattlesnakes, .... .

23. The cupcakes you baked for Harry smell delicious; unfortunately, he can't smell anything himself with that stuffy nose of his.

24. Charles, who is insufferably immature for his age, is only interested in trivial subjects and stupid jokes.

25. That is the town where George Sand and Frederic Chopin spent their winter in Mallorca.

26. I saw the cat creeping out of the bag.

27. Unless you plan on leaving with a black eye, I suggest you stop taunting Judith.

28. After being tossed on the barbecue, Malcolm thought the shrimp tasted much better.

29. Which statement about subject-verb agreement is false?

30. Will you make the children some play clothes out of those old drapes, please?

31. Which sentence illustrate(s) correct pronoun-antecedent agreement?

32. Here, then, is the crux of the matter.

33. After gathering nectar and cleaning up the hive, the bees took a well-deserved break.

34. The cat ran herself ragged chasing that cricket around the yard all day.

35. Sitting in a tree at the top of the garden was a huge bluebird with long, yellow tail feathers.

36. Dazed and disheveled, her brow furrowed with anxiety, Helen emerged from the mountain cave.

37. Because of the abundant use of insecticides and pesticides in the world today, my embarrassing dandruff problem has improved considerably.

38. The principle of ... states that, in proper sentence structure, singular subjects must take singular verbs and plural subjects must take plural verbs.

39. Even though the stinging cold isn't exactly what I would wish for in a climate, I intend to spend a good three years of my life at the North Pole.

40. Their bird, an affectionate but mischievous white cockatoo, routinely toured the neighborhood on a skateboard.

41. For more than eight years, Waldo has been trying to worm his way into our secret society.

42. Mr. Dillon met with his new employees and tried to instill in them the drive to succeed that had characterized his sales teams in the past.

43. My husband was worried that the kids were staying up too late every night.

44. Alexandra turned and sprinted down the driveway because she could not tolerate Jude's presence even one second longer.

45. She was a lawyer before she became a full-time belly-dancing instructor.

46. Imagine my ... when the man I admire most in the world told me that my ideas were ... .

47. The image of my wife working quietly in her studio overwhelms me with a contented sense of peace and coziness that is difficult to fully express.

48. Hands clasped in my lap, I would sit for hours and watch that silly pigeon as he nestled on my windowsill and stared at me silently.

49. That small box contains only the tiniest parts of the remote-controlled airplane.

50. Fido, perplexed by his inability to catch his own tail, looked at us quizzically and harrumphed.

51. A clause is a group of grammatically related words that contains a subject and predicate; a phrase is a group of grammatically related words that does not contain a subject and predicate.

52. When used to join two ... , a .... is usually preceded by a .... .

53. Marta had a strong Argentine accent, even though her father was Macedonian and her mother Irish.

54. I bought the little boy with the lopsided grin a lollipop.

55. That man doing a jig in the town square is my uncle the philosopher.

56. Because I forgot to exercise, I became weak and lethargic; however, I soon regained my energy.

57. What she did last summer surprised just about everyone.

58. After the onslaught of bad publicity, the starlet decided to travel incognito.

59. People whose wisdom is indisputable are usually the most feared by those who knowingly wallow in ignorance.

60. The boss told me to stay late and clear my desk before I leave for vacation.

61. The girl with the long brown hair tumbled down the steps.

62. 'But how ugly you are!' said my neighbor, .....

63. Which sentence illustrates correct subject-verb agreement?

64. To quell the rise in the theft of paperclips, management placed a deadbolt on the door of the supply room.

65. Good sentence structure dictates that single-word modifiers and modifying phrases and clauses be placed .....

66. Which group of words is a phrase?

67. I couldn't understand, since she'd always seemed to love me, why Samantha refused when I proposed to her last night; granted, I was wearing a gorilla mask at the time.

68. Which sentence illustrates the correct use of parallel construction?

69. Sally can name all of the states in alphabetical order; consequently, her friends are impressed.

70. The principle of .... requires that the word or phrase patterns in a sentence be similar in order to create symmetry and emphasize the likeness between two or more ideas.

71. A phrase may function in a sentence as a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.

72. A modifier, which can be an adjective or adverb, or a phrase or clause acting as an adjective or adverb, should be placed as close as possible to the word it modifies.

73. The principle of .... states that, in proper sentence structure, a pronoun usually refers to something earlier in the text and must agree in number (singular or plural) with the thing to which it refers.

74. After the blond model wobbled precariously, she hit the runway with a thud and died.

75. The cat burglar, cunningly disguised as a mouse, was able to squeak through the fence undetected.

76. Which sentence illustrates the correct use of parallel construction?