Today’s official SAT question of the day is from the Writing section, question type #2: Identifying Sentence Errors.  For this type of question, you only have to find the problem, not fix it.  We can find the problem by reading carefully (yes, that is a different kind of reading than regular reading), making sure to read every single word and not overlook small differences since errors in these questions often come down to single letters.

Choice A: “to prepare” is correct – infinitive form, and “prepare for” is idiomatically correct (we don’t “prepare at” or “prepare on” something.  No problems so far.

Choice B: the speech “he was given” to all the… While it is possible to give someone a speech (making it a speech we have been given – like if we were handed a printout of a speech), in this case this speech is one he will be giving.  These are nearly homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently – like mite and might, or read and red, or reed and read), but they are different forms of the verb to give.  No need to check the rest; we’ve found a glaring error.

Verbs are such a common subject in the writing section of the SAT!  They always need to match their subjects in number and tense.