Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Nail those pesky pronomial-expression-antecedent SAT questions

Unlike her sister Heather, who would always put spiders safely outside if she found them in the house, Joanne’s fear kept her from going anywhere near the creatures.

A. Joanne’s fear kept her from going anywhere near the creatures
B. Joanne’s fear is what kept her from going anywhere near the creatures
C. fear is why Joanne had not gone anywhere near them
D. Joanne was too afraid to go anywhere near the creatures
E. they scared Joanne too much to go anywhere near them

The SAT Writing Section seems to have lots of pesky pronomial expressions without expressed and clearly recognizable antecedents.

In the "error sentence" above, "Heather" is compared to "Joanne's fear."
In the first sentence below, "pianist" is20used as an introductory appositive to "Arthur Rubenstein's performance."
In the second sentence, the booths are being attracted by the banners.

1) An extraordinary pianist, Arthur Rubenstein's performance was enthusiastically applauded by his audiences, who always demanded encores.
N.B., Those crafty College Board people put one red herring answer that eliminates the initial problem but creates another pronoun without an antecedent (and also a missing comma and a little passive voice thrown in). Arthur Rubernstein's audience enthusiastically applauded his performance with encores always being demanded.
Corrected: Arthur Rubenstein was enthusiastically applauded by his audiences, who always demanded encores.

2) Attracted by the colorful banners, booths featuring various ethnic foods tempted the fair-goers.
Corrected: Attracted by the colorful banners, the fair-goers found the various ethnic foods featured in the booths tempting.

Once we are onto the "pesky pronomial expressions" game, these questions become fairly easy.
Ted Williams often said that, to get the good pitches he needed to hit .400, he had to have the discipline to leave the lousy pitches alone, earning many bases on balls when he'd rather have been swinging away. When pitchers realized the Splendid Splinter wouldn't swing at the bad balls, they gave him good balls to hit.
It's not an exact analogy, but when students sit down for the SAT, it's important for them to be disciplined about nailing the easy questions so it matters when they get the hard ones.

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