<p>2 writing concerns I guess: </p>
<p>Which is correct: </p>
<p>"My failing the test was the reason I was grounded" </p>
<p>"Me failing the test was the reason I was grounded" </p>
<p>Both seem right to me... </p>
<p>Second one is this question in SAT writing which sometimes comes up: </p>
<p>"They were against the policy". </p>
<p>And say "they" was underlined.. Would "they" be wrong as it isn't clear what it is referring to? But grammatically it isn't ambiguous or wrong.. It may have been specified early is my worry...</p>
<p>ONE LAST: </p>
<p>At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the proposal to replace the existing Articles of Confederation with a federal constitution [were met with] fierce opposition. </p>
<p>The answer is [met with] but why is [met their] wrong? Is it because [their] is ambiguous so it relates back to my 2nd concern?</p>
<h1>1: I believe the correct one is “my failing the test…” but that’s my assumption only because I know me is an object.</h1>
<h1>2: You will never see a sentence like this on the SAT. An example that I can imagine would show up is: The red team and the blue team debated because they were against the bill. In that case, they would be ambiguous and therefore wrong.</h1>
<h1>3: It’s wrong because the subject of the sentence is the proposal, which is singular, and therefore takes a singular verb (was). The correct sentence should read:</h1>
<p>At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, THE PROPOSAL […BULL ****…] WAS MET WITH fierce opposition.</p>
<p>The actual answer is “met with” not “was met with”… But my question is, why is “met their” wrong in place of “met with”? </p>
<p>ALSO: 1 MORE QUESTION! </p>
<p>In order for the audience to believe in and be engaged by a Shakespearean character, they have to come across as a real person on the stage.</p>
<p>Doesn’t “be engaged by” break parallelism with “to believe in”??</p>
<p>It sounds right to me, but the real problem there is that “they” cannot refer to “the audience.”</p>
<p>EDIT: I realize the “they” is supposed to refer to “a character.” Either way, it’s wrong.</p>
<p>(1) For the first question:</p>
<p>“My failing the test was the reason I was grounded”
OR
“Me failing the test was the reason I was grounded”</p>
<p>failing is a gerund … it functions as a noun. To understand why “my” is the right choice, substitute another noun for “failing the test”, as for example “sloppiness”. Would you say “my sloppiness” or “me sloppiness”?</p>
<p>(2) Your second question is theoretical since you don’t provide a full example. In practice taking a sentence out of context means that the “they” could refer to something in a previous sentence. For example:</p>
<p>The legislators were diligent. They worked on the legislation for weeks.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with “they”: it’s not ambiguous.</p>
<p>In SAT questions ambiguities are contained within the sentence. So for example:</p>
<p>The boys were upset at the lack of teacher support while the girls were not, and despite the late hour they refused to return to class.</p>
<p>Here “they” is ambiguous. Does it refer to the “boys” or the “girls”.</p>
<p>Fogcity, the answer is actually [met with] not [was met with]… but my question is why isn’t [met their] incorrect?? </p>
<p>Also, could you answer my question about parallelism? </p>
<p>n order for the audience to believe in and be engaged by a Shakespearean character, they have to come across as a real person on the stage.</p>
<p>Doesn’t “be engaged by” break parallelism with “to believe in”…?</p>
<p>I answered your second question in #6 in a separate post. In short “to” is implied. See my example in the other post.</p>
<p>My understanding of your other question: is this correct/incorrect and why?</p>
<p>At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the proposal to replace the existing Articles of Confederation with a federal constitution [met their] fierce opposition.</p>
<p>I don’t see this as a grammar problem. The use of “met their” just doesn’t apply. No one “owns” the fierce opposition. This is not akin to “The children just met their friends”. The “fierce opposition” applies to the proposal. Since the proposal is inanimate it doesn’t “own” anything, so the use of their (or the singular equivalent) doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>I may be missing the sense of your question.</p>