Writing Skills
Writing Skills covers the production half of MDCAT English — agreement, sentence construction, proofreading and confusable words. Almost every English paper carries one item on subject-verb agreement and at least one error-identification item. Master the patterns below to bank quick marks.
Errors of Functions and Spellings
Pakistani learners regularly mix up homophones (words that sound alike but mean different things) and near-spellings. MDCAT examiners exploit these in fill-in-the-blank items.
- their / there / they're
- their = possessive ("their books"); there = place / existence ("there is a book"); they're = they are.
- your / you're
- your = possessive ("your bag"); you're = you are ("you're late").
- its / it's
- its = possessive ("the dog wagged its tail"); it's = it is / it has ("it's raining"). The apostrophe never marks possession for it.
- affect / effect
- affect is usually a verb ("smoking affects the lungs"); effect is usually a noun ("the effect of smoking"). Memory aid: Affect = Action (verb); Effect = End result (noun).
- accept / except
- accept = to receive ("I accept the gift"); except = excluding ("everyone except him").
- lose / loose
- lose = verb, opposite of win ("don't lose your keys"); loose = adjective, opposite of tight ("the screw is loose").
- then / than
- then = at that time / next ("first study, then sleep"); than = comparison ("she is taller than me").
- principal / principle
- principal = head of school / main ("the principal goal"); principle = a rule or law ("the principle of equality").
- stationary / stationery
- stationary = motionless; stationery = writing materials. (e in stationery = envelope.)
- advice / advise
- advice = noun ("good advice"); advise = verb ("I advise you to leave").
Frequently misspelled MDCAT words
- accommodate — double c, double m.
- occurrence — double c, double r.
- separate — not "seperate".
- definitely — not "definately".
- necessary — one c, double s.
- privilege — not "priviledge".
- achieve — i before e except after c.
- maintenance — not "maintainance".
- conscience / conscious — conscience = sense of right/wrong; conscious = aware.
Faulty Sentence Structure
Faulty sentence structure errors break the sentence as a unit. The four types below cover almost every MDCAT structural error.
Two independent clauses joined with no punctuation or with only a comma (a "comma splice"). Fix with a full stop, semicolon, or coordinating conjunction.
- Wrong (run-on): I love biology I want to be a doctor.
- Wrong (comma splice): I love biology, I want to be a doctor.
- Right: I love biology; I want to be a doctor.
- Right: I love biology, so I want to be a doctor.
An incomplete sentence missing either a subject, verb, or a complete thought. Often a dependent clause standing alone.
- Wrong: Because she was tired. (dependent clause, no main clause)
- Right: Because she was tired, she went to sleep.
- Wrong: Running through the corridor. (no subject, no main verb)
- Right: Ali was running through the corridor.
A modifier that has nothing logical to attach to in the sentence — it "dangles". Typically a participial phrase at the start.
- Wrong: Walking down the street, the trees looked beautiful. (Were the trees walking?)
- Right: Walking down the street, I thought the trees looked beautiful.
- Wrong: To pass the exam, hard work is required. (Hard work is not the one passing.)
- Right: To pass the exam, students must work hard.
Items in a list, comparison, or correlative pair must share the same grammatical form (all -ing, all to-infinitives, all nouns, etc.).
- Wrong: She likes swimming, hiking, and to read.
- Right: She likes swimming, hiking, and reading.
- Wrong: The job requires someone punctual, hardworking, and who can lead.
- Right: The job requires someone punctual, hardworking, and decisive.
- Correlative pairs (not only…but also, either…or, neither…nor) must connect parallel structures: "He is not only intelligent but also kind."
Proofreading and Editing
Proofreading is a final, careful pass to catch surface-level errors before submission — spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, missing words. Editing is a deeper revision of meaning, structure, and flow.
- Spelling: scan for the high-frequency confusables (their/there, its/it's, accept/except).
- Capitalisation: first word of every sentence, proper nouns (Pakistan, Lahore, Eid), I always capitalised.
- Punctuation: end punctuation, comma after introductory phrase, semicolon between independent clauses, apostrophe for possession/contraction.
- Subject-verb agreement: match singular/plural in every clause.
- Pronoun reference: every pronoun must point clearly to a single noun.
- Tense consistency: stay in the same tense unless a time shift is clearly signalled.
- Repeated words / typos: watch for "the the", doubled prepositions.
Editing for clarity
- Cut redundancy: "return back" → return; "free gift" → gift; "advance planning" → planning; "future plans" → plans.
- Replace wordy phrases with single words: "due to the fact that" → because; "in spite of the fact that" → although; "at this point in time" → now.
- Prefer the active voice for clarity: "The decision was taken by the committee" → "The committee took the decision."
- Read the sentence aloud — if you run out of breath, it is too long.
Standard proofreading marks
- A caret ( ^ ) marks where to insert a missing word or letter.
- A line through a letter / word means delete.
- Three lines under a letter means capitalise.
- A slash ( / ) through a capital means make lowercase.
Subject-Verb Agreement
The verb must agree with its subject in number and person. The grammatical subject (not the nearest noun) controls the verb.
- Singular subject → singular verb; plural subject → plural verb. "The boy is here." / "The boys are here."
- Two subjects joined by AND → plural verb. "Ahmed and Ali are friends." Exception: when AND joins two ideas referring to the same person/thing → singular. "Bread and butter is my breakfast."
- Either / Or, Neither / Nor → verb agrees with the nearer subject. "Neither the players nor the coach was present." / "Neither the coach nor the players were present."
- Indefinite pronouns are singular: each, every, either, neither, anyone, everyone, someone, no one, nobody, everybody, anybody, somebody. "Each of the students has a book." (not have)
- Collective nouns (team, family, committee, jury, government) take a singular verb when acting as one unit, plural when members act individually. "The team is winning." / "The team are arguing among themselves."
- Intervening phrases do not change the verb. "The bouquet of roses is beautiful." (subject = bouquet, not roses) / "The list of items is long."
- Plural-form, singular-meaning nouns — news, mathematics, physics, economics, politics, measles — take a singular verb. "The news is shocking." / "Physics is my favourite subject."
- "A number of" vs "the number of": "A number of students were absent." (plural) / "The number of students was small." (singular)
Special cases
- Distances, amounts, time as a unit → singular. "Ten kilometres is a long way." / "Five thousand rupees is not enough."
- "There is / there are" → the verb agrees with the noun that follows. "There is a book on the table." / "There are books on the table."
- Relative clauses: the verb in a who/which/that clause matches the noun the relative refers to. "She is one of the girls who have passed." (the girls, plural)
- Each of, every one of, neither of, none of + plural noun → singular verb in formal writing. "Each of the boys has a uniform." (Modern British English allows plural after none, but MDCAT keys the singular.)
Worked MCQs
Five MCQs on agreement, sentence-error and confusable-word patterns — classic MDCAT writing-skills items.
Q1. Choose the correct sentence:
Each is singular, so the verb is has and the pronoun is his (formal singular). The intervening "of the boys" does not change the subject — the subject is still each.
Q2. Identify the error: "Smoking affects the lungs and has many bad effect on health."
Effect is the noun and is singular here, but "many" requires a plural noun → bad effects. Note also that affects (verb) in the first half is correctly distinguished from effect (noun) in the second.
Q3. Fill in the blank: The number of applicants ____ much higher this year.
"The number of" takes a singular verb, while "a number of" takes a plural verb. The subject here is the number (singular), not applicants.
Q4. Which sentence has faulty parallelism?
Parallel structure requires items in a list to share the same grammatical form. The second option mixes -ing forms with a to-infinitive, breaking parallelism. The first and third are internally parallel; the fourth is a parallel adjective list.
Q5. Choose the correct word: "____ going to be a long day."
It's is the contraction of "it is" — required here. Its is the possessive ("the cat licked its paws"). Its' does not exist as a word in standard English.
Quick Recap
- their / there / they're; your / you're; its / it's — possessive vs contraction is the trap.
- Affect (verb, action) vs effect (noun, end result).
- Run-on / comma splice = two independent clauses without proper punctuation; fix with full stop, semicolon, or conjunction.
- Sentence fragment = incomplete idea, often a stray dependent clause.
- Dangling modifier = an introductory phrase whose subject is missing or wrong; the noun right after the comma must be the doer.
- Parallelism = same grammatical form for items in a list or comparison.
- Subject-verb agreement: ignore intervening prepositional phrases; each, every, anyone = singular; "a number of" = plural; "the number of" = singular.
- Plural-looking but singular: news, mathematics, physics, politics.
- Proofread for: spelling, capitalisation, punctuation, agreement, pronoun reference, tense consistency.