Free HESI A2 study guide
Grammar is tested where it changes what a sentence means rather than where it is only a matter of style. Agreement, punctuation and modifier placement carry most of the section.
Last updated August 2026
HESI question counts and timings are set by your nursing programme rather than published centrally, so there are no official per-subject figures to show here. Confirm which subjects you sit before planning around any.
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions. You need them mainly because other rules depend on them: agreement, modifier placement and pronoun reference are all stated in these terms.
Identify the main verb of a sentence first. Almost every other grammar question becomes easier once you have.
Commas, semicolons, colons and apostrophes, tested where they change meaning rather than where they are decorative. A comma before a conjunction joining two complete sentences, and an apostrophe distinguishing possession from a contraction, are the two that appear most.
A semicolon joins two sentences that could each stand alone. If one side cannot stand alone, it is wrong.
Regular plurals and the irregular ones that fill medical vocabulary: nucleus becomes nuclei, diagnosis becomes diagnoses, bacterium becomes bacteria, vertebra becomes vertebrae.
Latin and Greek endings follow their own patterns. Learn the six or seven that appear in anatomy and you have covered most of them.
A simple sentence has one independent clause; a compound sentence joins two with a conjunction or a semicolon. Recognising which you have determines whether a comma is required, optional or wrong.
Two complete sentences joined by only a comma is a comma splice, and it is always the incorrect option.
Putting scrambled sentences into a coherent order. The logic is carried by transitions and by pronouns, since a pronoun cannot appear before the noun it refers to.
Find the sentence with no pronouns and no back-references. That is almost always the opening one.
A descriptive phrase that appears to modify the wrong thing, usually because the intended subject is missing. "Walking into the room, the monitor was alarming" has the monitor doing the walking.
Whatever follows the opening comma must be the thing the opening phrase describes. Check that pairing directly.
Whether a passage holds together: consistent tense, logical order, and transitions that match the relationship between ideas. Questions ask you to spot the sentence that breaks the flow or the connector that contradicts it.
Read the transition words on their own. A "however" between two agreeing sentences is the error.
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