<p>The passage talks about a camp founded by John Wallach to bring together teenagers form opposite sides of the comflicts all over the globe.</p>
<pre><code> (14)According to Wallach, If you begin to know your enemy, if you begin to understand your enemy, it's inevitable that you will begin to feel some empathy." (15)He believed that peace has to start among the young, being that the hatred of the adults in the campers' homelands is very deeply ingrained.
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<p>Which of the following revisions is most needed in sentence 15?
A. Insert "Furthermore" at the beginning
C. Change "being that" to "since"</p>
<p>The answer is C, but why not choose A? And isn't "being that" the same as "since"? Thanks!</p>
<p>It would be C because the question asked for the most needed one. Furthermore would just make the transition better, while being that sounds bad and needs correction.</p>
<p>Gertrudetrumpet is correct. The question asked for the one that is most needed. Choice C makes the sentence sound smoother. Choice A would be incorrect because the use “Furthermore” is not directly necessary because he doesn’t say what he believed in sentence 14, so there is nothing to “further” in sentence 15. I don’t really know to how explain it but I’ll try.
If sentence 14 stated something along the lines of : “Wallach believed that you should know your enemy to live in peace” then “Furthermore” would be more appropriate. "Furthermore, he believed that peace has to start among the young, being that the hatred of the adults in the campers’ homelands is very deeply ingrained.</p>
<p>‘Being that’ actually equates in meaning to ‘is’ rather than ‘since’. (He denied the request; his reason being that they weren’t old enough.") Notice that the phrase ‘being that’ actually contains elements of two different parts of the sentence structure. Being’ is a form of the linking verb ‘is’. It could actually be replaced by any tense form of ‘is’ such as ‘was’. ( his reason is that.,…his reason was that…)</p>
<p>The word ‘that’ is not part of the verb in that sentence. Rather, it is a conjunction introducing the noun clause that acts as the predicate nominative complement of the verb ‘being’. The clause is: ‘that they weren’t old enough.’</p>
<p>The phrase ‘being that’ in itself is ungrammatical. You will not find it in a list of synonyms for ‘because’ or ‘since’ unless you are looking in a dictionary of American idiom, which lists words and phrases we commonly use as slang. The day may come when ‘being that’ becomes accepted usage, but it hasn’t come yet.</p>
<p>So, back to the original question. ‘Furthermore’ is a conjunctive adverb which does improve the coherence of the passage, but it is not an essential element of the thought and its absence does not have a seriously negative effect on the passage.</p>
<p>On the other hand, ‘being that’ is clearly ungrammatical and its use, while not seriously harming the communication of the writer’s idea, does great damage to the writer’s persona and authority. Remember that a writer projects a personality through their writing. That personality may be friendly and joking or it may be stern and sober or any number of other things. These days in composition another term for this personality is ‘voice’. The ancient Greeks called it ‘ethos’. This writer is trying to be serious and factual and compassionate. It doesn’t help to use a phrase that is ungrammatical, slangy and careless.</p>