{"id":3566,"date":"2013-11-05T15:23:18","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T15:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/testpreparations.com\/help\/?p=3566"},"modified":"2014-12-02T08:26:55","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T08:26:55","slug":"nonstandard-english-troubleshooting-idiom-errors-on-the-sat-and-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/nonstandard-english-troubleshooting-idiom-errors-on-the-sat-and-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonstandard English: Troubleshooting Idiom Errors on the SAT and ACT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The English usage that is tested on standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, is formal academic English.\u00a0 It may or may not reflect how students usually speak or even write. \u00a0The term idiom error refers to formal usage rather than common usage.<\/p>\n

Similar Meanings and Spellings<\/strong><\/p>\n

The difference between using the correct word form and the incorrect form is sometimes determined by matching the spelling and the meaning.\u00a0 The word affect<\/strong> is either the verb “to influence”, or more rarely, in psychology, a synonym for emotion.\u00a0 It does not mean the same thing as the word effect<\/strong>, which is either a noun meaning result or a verb “to cause”.\u00a0\u00a0 Similarly, adapt <\/strong>means “to change”, while adopt<\/strong> means “to take as one’s own.” The two word phrase all ready<\/strong> means that all are ready.\u00a0 The word already<\/strong> is an adverb referring to time.<\/p>\n

Awkward Phrases<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a number of phrases that do not add anything to meaning, and can be either dropped or reworded.\u00a0 The phrase “as to” can be replaced with “about”, and the phrase “being that” can be replaced with\u00a0 either because<\/strong> or sinc<\/strong>e.\u00a0 Similarly, the phrase “the fact that” can be dropped entirely. Phrases such as kind of<\/strong> or sort of<\/strong> can be replaced with rather<\/strong> or somewhat.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nonstandard Words and Phrases<\/strong><\/p>\n

The phrase all right<\/strong> has two separate words.\u00a0 “Alright” is not standard.\u00a0 Similarly, the adverbs anywhere<\/strong>, somewhere<\/strong>, everywhere<\/strong>, and nowher<\/strong>e do not end with an s.\u00a0 The word irregardless is a double negative, so appropriate usage is the word regardless<\/strong>. The contraction ain’t is also nonstandard, and should be replaced with a more appropriate contraction.<\/p>\n

Other Formal Phrases<\/strong><\/p>\n

The phrase different from<\/strong> is more appropriate than different than<\/strong>, and \u00a0the phrase due to means the same as caused by.\u00a0 The word among<\/strong> means three or more, and between<\/strong> is used to compare two things. In addition, phrases such as outside of, inside of, off of or atop of\u00a0 should be replaced with the prepositions outside, inside, off, and atop.\u00a0\u00a0Most of these words and phrases will not be caught by a typical spell-checking word processing program.<\/p>\n

Do you need to know more about how test questions on the SAT or ACT are scored? Learn more<\/a> about how we are assisting thousands of students each academic year.<\/p>\n

Test Prep Academy is the premier test prep and private tutoring company for college-bound students. Our highly qualified test prep tutors deliver one-on-one personalized instruction that fit our student\u2019s busy schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overview: The English usage that is tested on standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, is formal academic English.\u00a0 It may or may not reflect how students usually speak or even write. \u00a0The term idiom error refers to formal usage rather than common usage. Similar Meanings and Spellings The difference between using the correct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3019,3020,2851],"tags":[3023,3174,3220],"class_list":["post-3566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comprehension-and-grammar","category-essay-and-writing","category-sat","tag-academic-english","tag-idiom-errors","tag-nonstandard-usage"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}