please explain these sentence errors

<p>1.The reason I (will)A not be (going)B to Mexico this year is (because)C I will use up all my travel money (in attending)D an important meeting in Singapore. (No error)E.
answer- C
If i had to guess i would say that because you need to… ‘define’ reason using a linking verb. i dont think ‘because’ is a linking verb. can anyone confirm? I put D because i thought in attending was not a correct idiom, shouldnt it be to attend?</p>

<p>2.(Hopefully)A, we (will be)B able to complete the building (before)C the rainy season sets (in)D. No errorE. </p>

<p>answer is A. why?- i put no error</p>

<p>3.You (would)A have to choose (her)B, if you are looking (for)C the best athlete to (represent)D the school. No errorE. </p>

<p>answer- A… i guess correctly, but why A?</p>

<p>4.All the trapped miners (began)A to (lose)B hope, (it)C had been twenty four hours (since)D the tunnel collapsed. No errorE. </p>

<p>answer is C. anyone know why? </p>

<li>Why is ‘not merely’ incorrect usage? As in “He was not merely expected to contribute funds, but to work as hard as the other patrons.”</li>
</ol>

<p>tip- “none of us knows” is proper. None is singular; so is knows. Didnt sound right to me…and i got it wrong</p>

<p>thanks!</p>

<p>do not know any of the others, but...</p>

<ol>
<li> "Hopefully" means that we will be feeling hope as we complete the building. Hopefully should be replaced by "It is to be hoped" or "We hope".</li>
</ol>

<ol>
<li><p>"The reason...is because..." is incorrect; the sentence should be "The reason...is that...". "Because" is not a verb; it's a conjunction(?) or something. Anyway, in the sentence "The reason is _____," you need a predicate nominative (a noun) in the blank. "Because..." creates an adverbial clause, whereas "that..." creates a noun clause (which you want).</p></li>
<li><p>"Hopefully" is incorrectly used as an adjective modifying the noun "we." "Hopefully" is actually an adverb, so should modify a verb or another adverb. The correct sentence would be "With hope, we will be able to complete the building before the rainy season sets in." (although some people might complain about the preposition at the end of the sentence).</p></li>
<li><p>The other verb in the sentence (not "would") is in the present tense; therefore, "would," which is in the conditional tense, is inappropriate. "Would" should be "will."</p></li>
<li><p>"All the trapped miners began to lose hope" and "it had been twenty-four hours since the tunnel collapsed" are both independent clauses (can stand alone as a sentence). To link them, you need either a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so, etc.) or a semi-colon.</p></li>
<li><p>You know how you're not supposed to have double negatives (e.g. "I don't have no time.")? Well, "merely" is a negative adverb; it already limits the verb, so you can't negate it. The same goes for other adverbs such as "scarcely, hardly, etc.".</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Hope this helps, and sorry if I confuse you. ^_^ It's kinda hard to explain exactly why some of this stuff is wrong (I'm afraid I'm not a very good teacher).</p>

<p>wow altair u know ur grammer</p>

<p>i envy you altairaqua</p>

<p>"Hopefully" is incorrectly used as an adjective modifying the noun "we." "Hopefully" is actually an adverb, so should modify a verb or another adverb. The correct sentence would be "With hope, we will be able to complete the building before the rainy season sets in." (although some people might complain about the preposition at the end of the sentence)." </p>

<p>That is actually debatable. Many people feel that this is no longer a case if "bad grammar" as much as others have it as their pet peeve. I guess the SAT board still has it down as a fault in grammar, although it is well underway of becoming accepted.</p>

<p>But then again, am the freak who's actually interested in language change as opposed to the unreality of prescriptive grammars.... IMHO they should just leave that kind of question out of the exam.</p>

<p>Little Fwouk nailed it !</p>

<p>When using published tests, there is only one source and that is The College Board. Do yourself a huge favor and trash ALL the other tests. You can expect a few debatable questions on the TCB offerings, but at least you'll learn what THEY expect and HOW to answer similar questions. The wannabe tests published by PR, Kaplan, et.al. are pure garbage that will only mislead and frustrate you.</p>

<p>Xiggi Has Returned.</p>

<p>omgggggggggggggg its xiggi!!!! omg ***!!</p>

<p>Yeah, Fwoukje (interesting name, btw) and Xiggi are right. Some of the errors on the practice tests are really iffy--I personally think that "hopefully" used to mean "with hope" is fine--but what matters is what the College Board thinks >.<.</p>

<p>eck... this was a 3rd party SAT test</p>

<p>thats a good point though xiggi, i think ill stick with 10 reals for sentence errors etc from now on</p>

<p>and thank you altair- your explanations were very clear</p>

<p>QUOTE: 4. "All the trapped miners began to lose hope" and "it had been twenty-four hours since the tunnel collapsed" are both independent clauses (can stand alone as a sentence). To link them, you need either a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so, etc.) or a semi-colon.</p>

<p>I think that "it" was incorrect because its a faulty pronoun reference. "It" in this sentence doesn't refer to any specific person or subject of the sentence, thus its wrong.</p>

<p>Besides, do sentence-error questions actually test you on punctuation usage? I know sentence improvements have comma splice erros of such case, but identifying sentence errors rarely does so.</p>

<p>prettyprettyday:</p>

<p>it is correct in this case, " it" can be used as a displaced subject marker for inanimate subjects</p>

<p>for instance, the clause: 24 hours had passed, subject: 24 hours
can be made into: it had been 24 hours since, subject: it, refers to 24 hours which is now a subject predicate.</p>

<p>again, this is a question of style and taste (the second sentence is of course less concise, but they are synonyms nonetheless), so, not ungrammatical in my opinion...</p>