Can You Pass Our Impossible English Test?

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Think your a grammar nerd?

Did you pick up on the mistake we made in the previous sentence? If you did, bravo! We challenge you to put your smarts to the test by taking our impossible English test—and if you didn’t, we still invite you to try your darndest!

The questions will get harder as you go—will you ace the quiz or fail miserably? Only one way to find out—hit "Start Quiz" to begin!

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Questions Overview

1. Complete the sentence: “Shauna is frustrated because she has ______ quarters than she needs to do laundry.”
  1. fewer
  2. more
  3. less
  4. too few
2. Where should the comma go in this sentence? “Barbie can you call your mom?”
  1. After “Barbie”
  2. After “call”
  3. After “you”
  4. No comma needed
3. Complete the sentence: “We had to walk ______ the hill to reach the old monument.”
  1. over
  2. under
  3. through
  4. against
4. Of the below options, what form of the word “wave” should you use in this sentence? “The tattered flag ______ in the wind.”
  1. is waving
  2. have waved
  3. have been waving
  4. wove
5. Complete the sentence: “Will ____ be a test on this tomorrow?”
  1. there
  2. their
  3. they’re
  4. thair
6. Complete this sentence: “Donya is the ______ pony of all the ponies.”
  1. fastest
  2. faster
  3. most fast
  4. fastiest
7. Fill in the blank: “Don’t text me until after 6. The movie ______ by then.”
  1. will have ended
  2. ending
  3. ended
  4. end
8. What is the plural form of the word “stimulus”?
  1. Stimuli
  2. Stimulis
  3. Stimuluses
  4. Stimmies
9. Which word below is missing an apostrophe?
  1. Dont
  2. Your
  3. Hers
  4. Mine
10. Which answer correctly combines these two sentences into one sentence? “The dog smells like peppermint now. She ate my candy canes.”
  1. “The dog ate my candy canes and she smells like peppermint now.”
  2. “The dog that ate my candy canes and smells like peppermint.”
  3. “The dog smells like candy canes, which smell like peppermint.”
  4. “The candy canes ate my dog.”
11. How many errors do you spot in this sentence? “The cat don’t like dry food, she only eats canned tuna.”
  1. 2
  2. 3
  3. 1
  4. No errors
12. Which of the following words is an adverb?
  1. Carefully
  2. Lovely
  3. Dastardly
  4. Squiggly
13. Identify the direct object of the following sentence: “I sang the monkey a lullaby.”
  1. Lullaby
  2. I
  3. Sang
  4. Monkey
14. Which of the following words or phrases is not a preposition?
  1. Advance
  2. According to
  3. Toward
  4. Until
15. Fill in the blank: “The children were aged ______ 12 and 16.”
  1. between
  2. among
  3. through
  4. up

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really<\/i> well! Luckily, English is a subject you can get better at with practice, so your score can always be improved! Come back and try again once you\u2019ve done a little studying and see if you ace the quiz.","edit_links":[{"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Improve-Your-Grammar"},{"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure"}],"link_data":[{"title":"How to Improve Your Grammar","id":478363,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Improve-Your-Grammar","relUrl":"\/Improve-Your-Grammar","image":"\/images\/thumb\/a\/a5\/Improve-Your-Grammar-Step-17-Version-4.jpg\/-crop-200-200-200px-Improve-Your-Grammar-Step-17-Version-4.jpg","alt":"How to Improve Your Grammar"},{"title":"How to Improve Your Sentence Structure","id":10529507,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure","relUrl":"\/Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure","image":"\/images\/thumb\/e\/e6\/Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure-Step-11.jpg\/-crop-200-200-200px-Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure-Step-11.jpg","alt":"How to Improve Your Sentence Structure"}],"minimum":6,"image":"","image_url":""},{"number":4,"text":"C! You\u2019ve got some studying to do.","meaning":"OK, so a C\u2019s not the end of the world\u2014and this quiz was made for adult native English speakers, so if you\u2019re a kid, or if you're still learning English, you actually did pretty well! Luckily, English is a subject you can get better at with practice, so your score can always be improved. Come back and try again once you\u2019ve done a little studying and see if you ace the quiz.","edit_links":[{"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Improve-Your-Grammar"},{"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure"}],"link_data":[{"title":"How to Improve Your Grammar","id":478363,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Improve-Your-Grammar","relUrl":"\/Improve-Your-Grammar","image":"\/images\/thumb\/a\/a5\/Improve-Your-Grammar-Step-17-Version-4.jpg\/-crop-200-200-200px-Improve-Your-Grammar-Step-17-Version-4.jpg","alt":"How to Improve Your Grammar"},{"title":"How to Improve Your Sentence Structure","id":10529507,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure","relUrl":"\/Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure","image":"\/images\/thumb\/e\/e6\/Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure-Step-11.jpg\/-crop-200-200-200px-Improve-Your-Sentence-Structure-Step-11.jpg","alt":"How to Improve Your Sentence Structure"}],"minimum":0,"image":"","image_url":""}]" class="quiz_results_data"/>\"What<\/picture>","alt":"What Book Should I Read Quiz"},{"title":"Lord of the Rings Trivia Quiz","id":14811355,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Lord-of-the-Rings-Quiz","relUrl":"\/Lord-of-the-Rings-Quiz","image":"\"Lord<\/picture>","alt":"Lord of the Rings Trivia Quiz"},{"title":"Which Harry Potter Character Am I Quiz","id":13999680,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Harry-Potter-Character-Quiz","relUrl":"\/Harry-Potter-Character-Quiz","image":"\"Harry<\/picture>","alt":"Which Harry Potter Character Am I Quiz"}],"number":1},{"text":"Science","result":"Greetings, fellow science geek! Try one of these quizzes next:","next_quizzes":[{"title":"What Is Your Outer Space Personality Type Quiz","id":14433146,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Cosmos-Persona-Quiz","relUrl":"\/Cosmos-Persona-Quiz","image":"\"Cosmos<\/picture>","alt":"What Is Your Outer Space Personality Type Quiz"},{"title":"How Good is Our Chemistry Quiz","id":14755854,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Relationships\/Our-Personality-Chemistry","relUrl":"\/Relationships\/Our-Personality-Chemistry","image":"\"Our<\/picture>","alt":"How Good is Our Chemistry Quiz"},{"title":"Can You Spot The False Climate Claims Quiz","id":14467288,"url":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/Can-You-Spot-The-Fake-Facts","relUrl":"\/Can-You-Spot-The-Fake-Facts","image":"\"Can<\/picture>","alt":"Can You Spot The False Climate Claims Quiz"}],"number":2}]}" class="quiz_questionnaire_data"/>

English Grammar 101

What is grammar?

Grammar refers to the structure of language. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to communicate our thoughts, ideas, and opinions as effectively! For instance, if you said, “While walking through the garden, crows cawed to one another,” it’s unclear who, exactly, is walking through the garden. Is it the crows? But if you modify this sentence a little—“While I walked through the garden, crows cawed to one another”—it’s suddenly obvious what’s happening. Grammar helps us communicate precisely and clearly.

Sure, you could argue that you can assume that the initial sentence doesn’t mean it’s the crows who are walking—but you don’t want to over-rely on assumptions. That’s how you get sentences like “Let’s eat Grandma” instead of “Let’s eat, Grandma” (with a vocative comma before “Grandma,” signifying the speaker is addressing her). Please, keep your grandmother safe: know your grammar.

That being said, the notion of “correct” English grammar is actually pretty fraught (as anyone who’s ever been shut down in an argument by a “grammar nazi” can probably attest). It’s important to remember that grammar is always changing and evolving, and that different groups of people follow different grammatical rules—and that as long as those rules are consistent and uphold a linguistic structure whereby people can communicate clearly and effectively, they’re still correct.

For instance, the habitual “be” is common in African American Vernacular English, but is often assumed to be grammatically incorrect by grammar purists. Yet the habitual “be” is used consistently within AAVE to mark habitual or extended actions: “Ray be working late” indicates that Ray regularly works late, rather than that he is working late in the moment . This is in contrast to standard English, in which “is” denotes a temporary state. The habitual “be” implies an ongoing or repeated state or action.

Grammar doesn’t just shift from culture to culture or location to location: it also changes over time, so words and rules we may once have viewed as “incorrect” are now accepted as standard English. For example, while we use the pronoun “you” to refer to a single person or multiple people, in Old English, “you” was a second-person plural pronoun—and only when it was the object of the sentence! Otherwise, you’d use “thou,” “thee,” or “ye,” depending on how many people you were referring to and whether they were the object or subject of the sentence.

How often do you hear “thou,” “thee,” or “ye” nowadays?

Want to learn more?

To read more about grammar and the English language, check out these sources:

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