How do I Understand & Use an English Grammar Answer Key?

Understanding grammar answer keys sometimes requires help.

Before understanding and using an English grammar answer key, you will need to familiarize yourself with the chapter or section heading the book has or keep note of the page numbers on which the questions you're completing are located. These numbers will come in handy when referring to your answers. Also, make sure you understand the format of the questions so the answers don't look unfamiliar and remember to bookmark the answers you're referring back to.

Things You'll Need

• English grammar workbook

Instructions

1. Locate the unit or chapter in which the question you are seeking the answer for is. If the questions are part of an exercise set, then backtrack to find the chapter it belongs to.

2. Locate the exercise subset under the unit heading. The subset should be broken down into smaller sets that are numbered. Each number of this smaller set will correspond to the number of the question.

3. Look beside the number corresponding to the question and you will see a word, sentence or sentence fragment. This grammatical entity belongs in the empty space of the question. There could be multiple answers. For instance: He's not working/He isn't working. In that case, both are correct.

4. Look beside the question and, if you don't see a word or phrase, there could be a letter. This letter probably refers to a set of columns that contain sentences that need to be matched.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep the pages of answer key you're referring to bookmarked.

References

• Basic Grammar in Use; Raymond Murphy; 1989
• Basic American Grammar and Usage; Marcel Danesi; 2006