Improving Paragraphs questions test your ability to eliminate wordiness and redundancy, and to combine sentences to make the language as efficient as possible. While wordiness and long sentence are not always necessarily wrong in formal writing, most Improving Paragraphs questions appreciate brevity. So, when improving a specific sentence in the passage, combining two sentences, and/or adding sentences, you want to make sure that your sentences are as concise and effective as possible.
There are several tests to ensure that you are not making sentences more wordy than necessary and/or that you chose an answer that is the best (most concise) version of a sentence
- Avoid Passive voice
- Write "The student read the book" instead of "The book was read by the student"
- Avoid "to be" verbs and their conjugates
- Write "The student read the book" instead of "The book was being read by the student"
- Do not use more words that necessary to make a point
- Write 'The angry teacher yelled at the class" instead of "The teacher was angry and the teacher yelled at the class"
- Do not use repetitive or redundant language
- Write 'The reason that" instead of "The reason is because"
Your ability to write brief, concise and effective sentences is tested by both your ability to identify wordy sentences within the passage, and your ability to use effective transitions to join two sentences together. So, in approaching Improving Paragraphs Questions:
- When asked to rewrite or select the best version of a sentence, make sure that you chose a concise answer choice which preserves the meaning of the original sentence while eliminating wordiness errors.
- When asked to add a sentence to a paragraph, ensure that the answer choice you select conveys the appropriate meaning with the least possible amount of words. If two answer choices say the same thing, and one is shorter, chose the shorter answer choice
- When asked to combine two sentences, combine them using the least amount of words possible to preserve the original meaning.
- Ex: When asked to combine the sentences: "The kids went to the mall. At the mall, the kids bought milk and cookies." the sentences could be combined by just putting an "and" between them, but it would be much better to combine them "The kids went to the mall where they bought milk and cookies."
- You can feel free to move words around in the original sentence(s) to make a combination that is as concise and effective as possible, but make sure you do not eliminate any necessary words and/or change the meaning of the sentence and/or create any ambiguities.
- When selecting an answer choice, make sure that there is no other answer choice that says the same thing more concisely and effectively.
