ancient story d. popular belief

W H E N W E A R E communicating with others, speaking has several advantages over writing. For one thing, speaking enables dialogue. If we don’t understand what the speaker is say- ing, we can ask the speaker to repeat, rephrase, or clarify his or her ideas. For another, when we speak, we have much more freedom to play with grammar and stylistic conventions. We can use slang, clip off endings of words, and state incomplete or run-on thoughts. Because we are speaking, often for- mulating our thoughts as we go, it is natural and even acceptable to make occasional grammatical mistakes. And when we do, we have the chance to correct ourselves before we continue. Not so with writing. Writing necessarily distances us from our audience, and we cannot correct ourselves as we go along or backtrack if our reader doesn’t understand what we have written. When we write, there- fore, we need to be clear and correct from the start. Otherwise, our readers may not be able to understand our message. Because you will do an enormous amount of writing in college—including lab reports, research papers, and essays—admissions officers need to know that you can communicate clearly and correctly in written Eng- lish. That’s why Section II of the TOEFL exam tests your knowledge of English grammar and style. C H A P T E R Structure: Grammar and Style As you can imagine, you will do a great deal of writing in college. To do well in an American school, you will need to write in clear, gram- matically correct English. In this chapter, you will learn exactly what the structure section of the TOEFL exam is like. You will also review and practice basic grammatical rules and patterns so you can write cor- rectly and perform well on the exam. 3 5 1 T h e T O E F L E x a m S t r u c t u r e S e c t i o n : W h a t t o E x p e c t Section II: Structure does not require you to actually write grammatically and stylistically correct sentences. You will have that opportunity in Section IV: Writing or the Test of Written English™ [TWE®] if you take the paper-based exam. Instead, Section II presents you with a series of sentences in which you have to cor- rectly fill in the blank or identify a grammatical mistake. These sentences will cover a wide range of topics, including history, biology, culture, and art. But you do not need background knowledge in the subject to answer the questions correctly. The sentences will pro- vide enough context to make their meaning clear, but the actual subject of the sentence is not important. What matters is that you can recognize and correct errors in English grammar and style. K i n d s o f S t r u c t u r e Q u e s t i o n s o n t h e T O E F L E x a m On both the computer-based and paper TOEFL exams, you will find two types of questions: Type 1: Incomplete sentences. These sentences will have a blank and ask you to select the correct word or phrase to put in that blank. On the paper-based TOEFL exam, these questions are called Structure questions. Examples: 1. It is illegal _________ cars on a two-lane road when there is a solid yellow dividing line.

a. passes b. passing

c. to pass d. when passing

2. After a female seahorse produces eggs, she gives them to her mate, _________ fertilizes them and carries them in his pouch until they are ready to be born.

a. he b. who

c. which d. while

Answers: 1-c, 2-b. Type 2: Sentences with underlined words or phrases. These sentences will have several underlined words or phrases. You will be asked to choose which of the underlined words or phrases is incorrect. On the paper-based TOEFL exam, these questions are called Written Expression questions. – S T R U C T U R E : G R A M M A R A N D S T Y L E – 5 2