English Grammar Test Study Guide 2026

In American English, collective nouns like "team" are treated as singular and take singular verbs.

'Wish' expressing an unreal present situation is followed by the simple past tense ('had'), following the same pattern as the if-clause in a second conditional.

The present progressive "is reading" expresses an action happening at this moment.

The sentence 'On Thursday after school, I hurled snowballs towards three amusing boys' is a simple sentence. It contains only one independent clause, with a single subject ('I') and a single verb ('hurled'). The phrases 'On Thursday after school' and 'towards three amusing boys' are prepositional phrases, not additional clauses.

Option A correctly punctuates the direct quotation with an interruption. Commas are used to set off 'I asked' from the quoted material. The second part of the quote, 'can you always be so forgetful?', correctly begins with a lowercase letter because it continues the original sentence. Finally, the question mark belongs inside the closing quotation mark because the quoted material itself is a question.

The verb 'advise' can be followed by a gerund when no object is specified, meaning to recommend an action generally. Here, 'changing' is the gerund, correctly indicating the recommended action of obtaining some cash. If an object were present (e.g., 'he advises *us*'), then an infinitive ('to change') would be used.