攻克句子改错题

Beat Improving Sentences The SAT Writing section doesn’t mess around. For Identifying Sentence Errors you had to identify errors in sentences. Care to guess what you have to do for Sentence Improvement questions? That’s right: You have to improve sentences. Improving Sentences questions consist of a single sentence with one underlined word or phrase. Your mission with that underlined portion of the sentence is twofold. First, you have to figure out if there’s a problem with the underlined part. Then, if there is a problem, you have to decide which answer choice fixes the problem. Sometimes—one-fifth of the time, in fact—no error will exist. 题目说明 The Directions You know the drill. Learn the directions now so you don’t have to waste time reading them when you take the actual SAT. Directions: The following sentences test correctness and effectiveness of expression. In choosing answers, follow the requirements of standard written English; that is, pay attention to grammar, choice of words, sentence construction, and punctuation. In each of the following sentences, part of the sentence or the entire sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence you will find five ways of phrasing the underlined part. Choice A repeats the original; the other four are different. Choose the answer that best expresses the meaning of the original sentence. If you think the original is better than any of the alternatives, choose it; otherwise choose one of the others. Your choice should produce the most effective sentence—clear and precise, without awkwardness or ambiguity. Notice that once again, the SAT wants you to follow the rules of standard written English when you’re answering these questions. The rules of standard spoken English aren’t accepted here, so a lot of English that’s passable in speech will be considered incorrect on Improving Sentences questions. Also notice that because answer choice A is always the same as the original sentence, you never need to waste time reading answer choice A. So, unless 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html you think the sentence contains no error, skip directly to B. 范例 An Example to Sample Here’s what an Improving Sentences question looks like: Jenna was awarded the medal not for her academic success or her skill on the soccer field, but for her being a participant in gym class. (A) but for her being a participant in gym class (B) the reason being for her participation in gym class (C) the reason was her participating in gym class (D) but for her being participation-willing in gym class (E) but for her participation in gym class 好消息 The Good News . . . and the Good News On this section, as on the other sections, grammar terminology is not tested. Neither is spelling. Mastering this section does not require you to memorize a huge amount of material or learn a ton of new concepts. You’ll see questions on the passive voice, run-on sentences, and misplaced modifiers. You’ll probably also encounter a few questions on parallelism, conjunctions, fragments, and gerunds. Although some of the material in this chapter is new, you’ll notice that the SAT tests many of the same grammar rules in this section that we already covered back in the Identifying Sentence Errors chapter. 八步策略 An Eight-Step Strategy All the self-help books these days have a twelve-step process to kick the habit. Improving Sentences are four steps easier to handle. Here are the eight steps: Read the sentence and try to hear the problem. If you find an error, eliminate A. 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html Before you look at the answer choices, figure out how to fix the error. Find the correction that most closely matches yours. If no correction matches, eliminate answers that repeat the error or contain new errors. If you’re still stumped, reach into your bag of tricks (more on those soon). Plug your answer back into the sentence to check it. If you’re still stumped—cut, guess, and run. Alright, now it’s time to put that exciting eight-step process into action. Below you’ll see a sample problem that we solve with the eight-step method, explaining each of the steps along the way: Jenna was awarded the medal not for her academic success or her skill on the soccer field, but for her being a participant in gym class. (A) but for her being a participant in gym class (B) the reason being for her participation in gym class (C) the reason was her participating in gym class (D) but for her being participation-willing in gym class (E) but for her participation in gym class Step 1: Read the sentence and try to hear the problem. As we have discussed, relying on your ear exclusively is risky on the SAT Writing section. The writers of the SAT know most students will listen for what sounds right to them, but often what sounds right is actually wrong. That’s because using just your ear most often means you’re using spoken English as your guide. Remember that this section of the SAT tests your knowledge of standard written English. In this chapter, we reinforce your understanding of the rules of standard written English. Knowing the rules gives you a strong foundation against which to check the signals your ear gives you that something in the sentence is wrong. In the sample sentence above, you might immediately notice the combined problem of wordiness and faulty parallelism—the phrase but for her being a participant 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html should be rewritten in a more compact form in which all the different components of the sentence align, or flow together, correctly (more on parallelism below). Even if you don’t come up with the specific term wordiness, you might have the sense that something about the underlined part is vague and a bit convoluted. It’s fine if you can’t think of the exact term that describes the problem. A general sense that something is wrong will go a long way. Just detecting the presence of an error allows you to cut answer choice A, which tips the guessing odds in your favor. More on that in step 2. Step 2: If you find an error, eliminate A. If you’re certain that there’s an error somewhere in the underlined part of the sentence, you can eliminate A since A always repeats the underlined part word for word. Again, you won’t need to know the exact term for the error in order to eliminate A. The fine art of A elimination gives you a great advantage on Improving Sentences questions. Here’s why: Cutting A means something more than just “one down, four to go.” Even if the other four answers look like gibberish to you, cutting A gives you the green light to guess. As we explain in the introduction to this book, the SAT does not contain a guessing “penalty.” The test is set up to discourage totally random guessing, but to reward educated guessing. If you can eliminate even one answer choice, the answer you choose becomes an educated guess—tipping the odds in your favor. Step 3: Before you look at the answer choices, figure out how to fix the error. Once you’ve figured out the problem in the underlined part of the sentence, say to yourself (silently—you don’t want to reveal your genius to other test-takers in the room): “This would be a better sentence if it read something like Jenna was awarded the medal not for her academic success or her skill on the soccer field, but for participating in gym class.” That version conveys the right information, but doesn’t take up unnecessary space. 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html Have you ever noticed that if you repeat a normal, everyday word like house over and over it starts to seem odd? That’s exactly what the answer choices of Improving Sentences questions will do to you. If you go right to the answer choices and read through them one by one, by the time you get to C, the answers will all sound equally confusing and wrong. Always approach the answer choices with a plan, which is what you think sounds correct. If you start looking at the answer choices with no idea of what you’re looking for, it’s possible all the answers will sound funny and incorrect. Step 4: Find the correction that most closely matches yours. Let’s say your correction reads, Jenna was awarded the medal not for her academic success or her skill on the soccer field, but for participating in gym class. Now look at the remaining answer choices and see which one most closely matches your correction: (A) but for her being a participant in gym class (B) the reason being for her participation in gym class (C) the reason was her participating in gym class (D) but for her being participation-willing in gym class (E) but for her participation in gym class E looks most like the answer you came up with before looking. It’s not exactly like your prepared answer—it uses her participation instead of for participating—but it’s very close. Rarely will an answer choice exactly match the one you generated on your own, which is fine. The purpose of preparing your own answer first is not to find an exact match in the answer choices but to have an idea of what is correct before you start reading the choices. If you find an answer that matches yours, awesome. Onward to the next question. Sometimes, though, you may not be totally sure whether any of the answer choices matches yours closely enough. In that case, move to step 5. Step 5: If no correction matches, eliminate answers that repeat the error or contain new errors. You’ll usually see a few answer choices that actually repeat the mistake. Others 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html might fix the original mistake, but in the process add a new error to the mix. Suppose you weren’t certain that E matched your prepared answer closely enough. In that case, you would read through the answer choices and try to determine if they repeated the first mistake or contained a new one. Answer choice B has a problem similar to that of the original sentence. It says, the reason being, which is a wordy phrase. Meanwhile, C creates a new problem: the word participating is a gerund but should be a noun. D repeats the original mistake, repeating the phrase but for her being; it also introduces a new problem by using the strange phrase participation-willing. Only E neither repeats the original problem nor contains a new one. Step 6: If still stumped, reach into your bag of tricks. Since you’ve already got E as a pretty solid answer from step 5, there’s no need to delve into the bag of Improving Sentences tricks just yet. So we’re going to skip step 6 for now and go right to step 7. At the end of the chapter is a section on which tricks to use to beat Improving Sentences questions when you’re in a pinch. Step 7: Plug your answer back into the sentence to check it. Plug the answer back into the sentence to check how well it works. Jenna was awarded the medal not for her academic success or her skill on the soccer field, but for her participation in gym class. Sounds good. Sounds right. Step 8: If you’re still stumped—cut, guess, and run. If you can’t decide on an answer choice to improve the sentence’s error, you’ve got two choices. First, if you’re able to cut at least one answer choice, you should always guess. If you’ve got a strong hunch that the sentence contains an error but you just can’t pinpoint it, cut A and guess. The guess odds tip in your favor if you can eliminate at least one choice, so don’t worry about choosing randomly from among the four remaining choices: B, C, D, or E. If you don’t know for sure if the sentence contains an error and you’ve got no clue which 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html answer choice might solve the error, you should leave the question blank and move on to another question you can answer confidently and quickly. Every minute counts. Don’t beat yourself up over an extra tough question. Use either of the strategies described in step 7 and move on pronto. 常见语法错误 Common Grammar Errors Just like Identifying Sentence Errors questions, Improving Sentences questions cover the same grammar over and over. In fact, there are five recurring errors on Improving Sentences questions. We call them the Big Five. The Big Five Passive voice Run-on sentences Misplaced modifiers Parallelism Wordiness We cover all of the Big Five below in more detail. Learn to spot all five and you’ll be well on your way to beating Identifying Sentence Errors with ease. 1. Passive Voice In sentences that use the active voice, the subject does the action. For example, in the sentence My dog ate a bunch of grass, you immediately know who ate a bunch of grass: the dog. The passive voice, in contrast, identifies the performer of the action late, or even never. For example, the sentence A bunch of grass was eaten leaves the reader unsure of who or what did the eating. Writers tend to avoid using the passive voice because it creates weak, wordy sentences. So, how do you know if you are dealing with a case of “the passives”? Usually, you’ll spot these words: is, was, were, are (or any other version of the verb to be) and the word by. If you see these words, ask yourself, What’s the action and who’s doing it? If the person (or entity) committing the action appears only at 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html the end of the sentence, or doesn’t appear at all, you’ve got a passive voice whispering bland nothings in your ear. After Timmy dropped his filthy socks in the hamper, the offensive garment was washed by his long-suffering father. (A) the offensive garment was washed by his long-suffering father (B) his long-suffering father washed the offensive garment (C) the washing of the offensive garment took place by his long-suffering father (D) long-suffering, the offensive garment was washed by his father (E) he left the offensive garment for his long-suffering father who washed it Here we see passive voice rearing its horrendous head. There’s a was, a by, and the fact that you don’t know until the last word of this sentence who washed Timmy’s socks. The phrase was washed suggests that someone or something did the cleaning—a parent, a washing machine, a river in Egypt. The point is, you don’t know how the socks got washed. In order to fix the passive voice, the performer of the action must get a place of prominence in the sentence and clear up what they’re doing. In the example above, the correct answer must make clear that Timmy’s father did the load of laundry. Both answers B and E fix the passive voice problem, but E is wordy and redundant, so B is the right answer. 2. Run-On Sentences A run-on sentence results when two complete sentences get jammed together. Run-ons usually sound breathless, as if an excited child is telling a story. Here’s an example of a run-on sentence: I walked into the pet store and asked the clerk if she had any talking parrots, this made her roll her eyes. The best way to test if a sentence is a run-on is to split the sentence in two and see if both halves of the sentence could function alone: 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html I walked into the pet store and asked the clerk if she had any talking parrots. This made her roll her eyes. Because each half of this sentence is complete on its own, the two halves cannot be joined together with a comma. Here are three ways to fix run-on sentences in Improving Sentences questions: Method 1: Use a semicolon. Method 2: Add a conjunction. Method 3: Make the clauses relate clearly. Method 1: Use a Semicolon One of the most common remedies you’ll find on the SAT is a semicolon. A semicolon (;) signals that both sides of the sentence are grammatically separate but closely related to one another. I walked into the pet store and asked the clerk if she had any talking parrots; this made her roll her eyes. Method 2: Add a Conjunction Another method for correcting run-on sentences is adding conjunctions. Suppose you see this run-on sentence: In her incredible eagerness to cheer her team to victory, Amy the cheerleader has lost her voice, therefore her performance at the games is a silent one. If you add the conjunction and: In her incredible eagerness to cheer her team to victory, Amy the cheerleader has lost her voice and therefore her performance at the games is a silent one. The run-on disappears. Method 3: Make the Clauses Relate Clearly Sometimes sentences contain strange relationships among clauses that can 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html obscure the meaning of the sentence. (A clause is just a bunch of words with a subject and a predicate). Here’s an example: The student council attempted to lure people to the dance with free food, most people attended the field hockey game. This sentence suggests that despite the student council’s efforts, people didn’t go to the dance because they went to the field hockey game. You can correct this run-on sentence by adding a word that makes this relationship clear: Although the student council attempted to lure people to the dance with free food, most people attended the field hockey game. Okay, time for a real example: The police reprimanded everyone at the graduation party, they didn’t seem very sympathetic to the fact that it was our senior year. (A) at the graduation party, they didn’t seem very sympathetic to the fact that it was our senior year (B) at the graduation party, seemingly the fact that it was our senior year did not make them sympathetic (C) at the graduation party without being sympathetic to the fact that it was our senior year (D) at the graduation party they didn’t, despite the fact that it was our senior year, seem very sympathetic (E) at the graduation party; they didn’t seem very sympathetic to the fact that it was our senior year A classic run-on. The two parts could easily stand alone: The police reprimanded everyone at the graduation party. They didn’t seem very sympathetic to the fact that it was our senior year. Remember, the SAT usually fixes run-ons by exchanging the comma for a semicolon. In this case, E, which uses the semicolon method, is the correct answer. Notice that you could have corrected the question above by turning the second 满分网（http://www.manfen.net） 更多SAT资料：http://www.manfen.net/forum-291-1.html half into a subordinate clause: Since they reprimanded everyone at the graduation party, the police didn’t seem very sympathetic to the fact that it was our senior year. Alternatively, you could have inserted the word and between the two clauses: The police reprimanded everyone at the party, and they didn’t seem very sympathetic to the fact that it was our senior year. The majority of Improving Sentence questions dealing with run-ons will require you to use one of the three methods we’ve discussed to fix the sentence. 3. Misplaced Modifiers A modifying phrase is a phrase that explains or describes a word. In standard written English, modifiers usually appear right next to the word they explain or describe. When modifiers are placed far away f