A few writing questions...

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>p. 725 #23</p>

<p>Given her strong sense of social justice, Bruns vehemently protested over her party failure to support a tax decrease for senior citizens. No error</p>

<p>Answer: C (protested over). I was just wondering why?</p>

<p>p. 725 #24</p>

<p>The friendly competition between my older sister and I began as soon as we learned that our aunt had joked that she might write a will [c]leaving her house to me alone</p>

<p>I thought the answer was D, despite the right use of objective case. I know that in the objective case, you use "me", but why not "I" IN this instance if "my older sister and I" is the subject??</p>

<p>p. 725 #29</p>

<p> Today a medican doctor must often make a choice between engaging in private practice or engaging in research.</p>

<p>Answer: D (or). Why?</p>

<p>p. 724 #16</p>

<p>In the early days* of the steam locomotive, compassionate engineers would sometimes have thrown coal overboad in poor neighborhoods.</p>

<p>Answer: C (have thrown)</p>

<p>I got this right, but I was wondering: In what instances do you use "have [verb]"?</p>

2

<p>hiya--</p>

<p>for the first one, the verb "protest" doesn't need a preposition after it. you protest something, instead of protesting over something.</p>

<p>for the second question, the subject is "competition," not "my sister and me." the main verb in the sentence is "began," and the competition is the thing beginning. "my sister" and "me" are both the objects of the preposition "between," which is why you need the object case.</p>

<p>for the third question, the proper idiom is "between X and Y," not "between X or Y."</p>

<p>for the fourth question, "would have thrown" describes a situation contrary to fact. if this were the usage intended by the sentence, we'd need the rest of the condition to be included in the sentence (" . . . would have thrown coal overboard in poor neighborhoods if they had been allowed to.") since there's no "if" phrase, we know that the sentence is trying to describe something that actually happened. in that situation, "would throw" means that the action used to happen constantly, and would be correct in this context.</p>

<p>hope that helps--i'm on my way to the gym so it's a little rushed :)</p>

3

<p>Very precise and correct explanations!!
Can you suggest few books to sharpen the skills?</p>

4

<p>The best way to handle grammar is IMO reading like a machine. LOL i know that sounds kind of weird, but let me explain.</p>

<p>When you read a grammar question, the first thing you want to do is forget all meaning of the sentence. When you read each word, read the word for what it is (noun, adjective, adverb, etc), not for what it means.</p>

<p>Example:</p>

<p>As my doctor instructed me to take regular medicines, I…</p>

<p>Don’t think about the fact that there is a doctor or anything else. Try to focus enough on WHAT the words are almost to the point where you don’t know what the sentence means.</p>

<p>The actual meaning of the words tends to create images in our mind of the event or situation the sentence describes. Whether or not you realize it, this distracts you from the main purpose of the questin: to find the grammatical error.</p>

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<p>As you read each word, phrase, and clause, keep alert for idiom errors, subject-verb disagreements, misplaced modifiers, etc.</p>

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<p>On the SAT, doing everything up to this point will find you the right answer 99% of the time (I made up that statistic, but you get the point).</p>

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<p>How to confidently know you have the right answer. After doing everything up to now, if you still have not spotted any grammatical errors, don’t assume there’s no error yet!. Sometimes, what the SAT test will do is have a grammatically correct sentence, but an illogical event, often created by the use of the wrong word. Grammatically, the sentence structure and every phrase is correct, but inconsistency between the logic of the sentence exists.</p>

<p>NOTE: I know this sounds a little weird at first, but just follow the steps and your score should improve. (1) Ignore sentence meaning. (2) Peruse carefully for grammatical errors (3) Double Check (4) Triple Check! (5) Quadruple check! (6) If no errors, look for logical inconsistency (5) If everything looks good, briefly skim the sentence again to check for grammar or logic issues AGAIN (6) Still nothing? Good, go mark “No error”</p>

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<p>I just realized this thread is 2 years old…Oh well, I should post this as a guide for SAT grammar lol…</p>