1. in which of the following sentences do you find a verb phrase? a. june was a collector of memorabilia. b. i believed every word he said. c. i shall be all that i am and more. d. the crowd roared as the bull charged. 2. which of the following topics would lend itself only to a formal style of writing? a. why living in the country is better than living in the city b. how i lost 10 pounds c. folk songs i have sung d. psychological effects of nuclear weapons 3. which one of these statements would be considered inappropriate in formal writing? a. he hates to be late. b. next, he prepares to conduct his experiments. c. he reviews the reports of his assistants. d. dr. thomson arrives promptly each morning. 4. for the greeting in a business letter when you don't know the name of the person who will be reading it, which of the following is least likely to conform to present-day usage? a. dear editor b. dear mrs. carleton c. dear mr. givens d. dear sir 5. which one of the following sentences contains an unnecessary word? a. rich was angry, but he concealed his feelings. b. she left early, though he told her not to. c. the snake raised up its head and struck. d. why don't you leave before the crowd arrives? 6. which of these is a run-on sentence? a. i thought about what he'd said soon i realized he was right. b. you and i and the whole team will go. c. i went home and ate and ate. d. before lunch, i played volleyball; after lunch i did again. 7. choose the connective that belongs in the blank in the following sentence. i like to play baseball. i can't throw a ball very well. a. in fact b. however c. for instance d. besides 8. which of the following sentences has a compound predicate? a. while he swam, she collected shells. b. she placed the shells in a plastic bag while he dried himself off. c. she raced along the path to beat him to the beach. d. she washed the shells and dried them in the sun. 9. which of the following is correct in regard to the use of formal english? a. in formal business correspondence, it's best keep the language impersonal. b. formal english is used more frequently in speaking than in writing. c. in formal english, we use words to say precisely what we mean. d. contractions are considered acceptable in any document. 10. which of the following best illustrates a pair of sentences that are joined by an understood relationship? a. luke put three dollars into the office football pool. he was looking forward to vacation. b. detective smiley scanned the dim hallway. he pulled his pistol from its holster. c. i don't understand a word you said. have you taken a course in english literature? d. it rained for ten days and ten nights. grandmother grady called a company to drill a well. 11. which of the following is the best opening sentence for a business letter that you want to sound fairly informal? a. i am in receipt of your order of february 10. b. be advised that i've just received your order. c. your order of february 10 arrived in our office today. d. this letter is to make you cognizant of our receipt of your order. 12. which of the following statements about connecting paragraphs is correct? a. you can't state an idea in paragraph 2 that's related to an idea in paragraph 1. b. two paragraphs may be joined by an action verb. c. a good connection between two paragraphs is an implied transition. d. you can use a pointing word that that refers to a word in the previous paragraph. 13. which of the following groups of words is a sentence fragment? a. stopping by the garden, we saw that the flowers were in bloom. b. stop by the garden. c. we stopped; she didn't. d. when we stopped by the garden. 14. choose the connective that belongs in the blank in the following sentence. everyone appeared to be having a good time. my impressions may have been wrong. a. in other words b. in fact c. of course d. furthermore

1) The sentence in which I find a verb phrase is b. I believed every word he said. When you are asked to find a verb phrase the first thing you should do is to define the predicate of the sentence. The predicate always contains needed verb phrase as you can see it in the option B. It also can be founded in the clause of the sentence but it this case it is placed right in the predicate ‘believed’ is a verb phrase. 2) The topic which would lend itself only to a formal style of writing is D. psychological effects of nuclear weapons. When deciding which style of writing you should employ, pay attention to the main theme of writing. According to the name of the topic the text must contain objective writing style that also should include citations. 3) The statement which would be considered inappropriate in formal writing is a. he hates to be late as this sentence contains word order that does not suits the formal style of writing. Task requires you to understand the difference between formal and informal writing and this option is the most suitable as it contains using sort of colloquial words/expressions that must be avoided. 4) For the greeting in a business letter when you don't know the name of the person who will be reading it, the following which is least likely to conform to present-day usage is A. dear editor. If you are not informed about the name of the person you are writing to, the only polite and proper greeting is Dear Sir/ Madam. Nowadays you will never come across ‘Dear Editor’ in formal business letter. 5) The sentence which contains an unnecessary word is c. the snake raised up its head and struck. There is one unnecessary word used in the sentence which does not make much sense. The word ‘up’ should be withdrawn because the sentence asks the exact same question with or without the word up, so it both not necessary and makes no difference in usage at all. 6) The run-on sentence is a. i thought about what he'd said soon i realized he was right. The task is to follow main characteristic of the run-on sentence which contains two independent clauses that are not linked with a conjunction so that it could be two complete sentence. You can make it up like this : I Thought about what he'd said. Soon i realized he was right. 7) The connective that belongs in the blank in the following sentence is ‘however’. Ilike to play baseball.However, i can't throw a ball very well. This task requires knowledge of using the conjunctive adverbs correctly. As you can see, the second sentence expresses opposed meaning to the previous one, so you should put contrastive conjunctive adverb to complete it. 8) The sentence which has a compound predicate is d. she washed the shells and dried them in the sun. This task is aimed to pays your attention to the complex sentence that has a predicate which consists of many verbs that belong to one object. They are usually joined by such words as ‘and’, ‘or’ and so on. As you can see, the subject is ‘she’ and she performs several actions. 9)The following which is correct in regard to the use of formal english is definitely a. in formal business correspondence, it's best keep the language impersonal. You have to follow the main requirements of writing a formal letter and the main rule is to make your writing neutral and concise, without personal appealing to a reader and using conjunctions etc. 10) The following best illustrates a pair of sentences that are joined by an understood relationship is b. detective smiley scanned the dim hallway. he pulled his pistol from its holster. As you can see, there is recognizable logical sequence of these two sentence that are linked with each other sensibly. When reading them you can imagine a piece of a short story whereas the other option contain completely unrelated sentences. 12) This one “c. a good connection between two paragraphs is an implied transition.” is the best statement which is correct about connecting paragraphs. Implied transition makes a logical connection between paragraphs by using transitional words or phrases. 13) This one “d. when we stopped by the garden.” is the group of words is a sentence fragmen. Sentence fragment is a group of words which is not a complete sentence. That option is a fragment as the sentence don’t have logical start and ending. 14) Here we need to choose the connective that belongs in the blank in the following sentence. So the sentence should look like this: c. Of course, my impressions may have been wrong. This option is the only one which makes the most sense. But anyway it depends on a situation.