PRAXIS-WRITING-SECTION Online Practice Questions and Answers

Correct Answer: D

Explanation: This sentence tests your knowledge of capitalization and awareness of parallelism. The original sentence is incorrect because choice "World Cup either through playing, watching or thru advertising" destroys the parallelism (i.e. thru advertising instead of simply "advertising") and uses the informal spelling of through (i.e. "thru"). Only choices "World Cup either through playing, watching or advertising" and "World Cup either through playing, watching or advertising for it" correct the parallelism error; however, the list should strictly contain gerunds in order to be parallel, so "advertising for it" is not the best choice. By ending with "for it" the author is also implying that one may "play for it" and "watch for it," and although one may play for the World Cup through a grammar stretch, one cannot possibly "watch for it" and do the same thing as one who simply "watches it." Choice "World Cup either through playing, watching or advertising" uses the appropriate capitalization (because the World Cup is a major sports event it is a proper noun that must be capitalized) and maintains strict parallelism in the concluding list of ways to be involved.

Correct Answer: C

Explanation: Only choice "summer many students go away to camps that teach them skills about camaraderie, perseverance and integrity" corrects the redundancy error in this sentence of writing "...summer camps..." after already stating that this event occurs "During the summer..." Choice "summer many students go away to summer camps that teach them skills about camaraderie, perseverance and integrity", "Summer many students go away to summer camps that teach them skills about camaraderie, perseverance and integrity" and "summer many students go away to summer camps that teach them skills about camaraderie, perseverance and maintaining integrity" suffer such redundancy. Choice "summer many students go away to summer camps that teach them skills about camaraderie, perseverance and maintaining integrity" also breaks the list's parallelism (values such as camaraderie and perseverance that should be followed simply by "integrity").

Correct Answer: A

Explanation: Comma is required to separate the clause.

Correct Answer: C

Explanation: A comma is not necessary, but if it is used it should be inside the quotation marks.

Correct Answer: A

Explanation: This sentence is flawed because of the redundancy in part A. To correct the error, shorten the underlined portion to read "around September." It is very unnecessary to prelude "September" with "the month of."

Correct Answer: E

Explanation: This sentence is correct as written.

Correct Answer: C

Explanation: The correct answer is "very best" because "best" is an absolute adjective. Some adjectives, including superlative adjectives like "best," cannot accept modifiers. When you think about the phrase "very best," it is redundant: if something is the best, then it can't be any more than that. It's already at the top of its category or class with no way to get better.

Correct Answer: D

Explanation: The correct answer is "who" because "who" should only be used to describe people, not things. Since a clock is clearly a thing, this sentence would be correct if "who" were changed to "that." Note that "who" can sometimes be used to refer to personified things to emphasize their human qualities. For example, that cartoon features a clock named Frank who sings, dances, and talks to the people in the village. In this case, the writer uses "who" to convey the clock's similarity to a person. By comparison, the clock in Titus' clock shop is just a clock.

Correct Answer: D

Explanation: The correct answer is "starts" because the tense of the verb "starts" doesn't agree with the rest of the sentence, even though it may seem to agree with "knows" at first glance. Note, however, that "know" has to agree with "farmer" while "starts" describes the action of "heat" and must agree with that noun instead. Changing "starts" to "start" will correct the problem.

Correct Answer: B

Explanation: The correct answer is "isn't" because the verb "isn't" doesn't agree with the subject "scissors." It's pretty obvious that "scissors isn't" doesn't sound correct when spoken aloud; you would naturally say "scissors aren't" if you were describing the condition of Adam's scissors. However, you've undoubtedly learned from other examples that you can't always trust what sounds right to your ear. This sentence is especially tricky because "scissors" is singular noun, so you might be tempted to think that "isn't" is the correct verb. However, there are a few words, like "scissors" and "pants," that act like plural nouns even when there is just one of them. Like all grammar rule exceptions, these singular nouns that behave like plural nouns have to be memorized.