<p>[Whereas] their friend Sean, who often behaved [as if]
A B
he had only one day left to live, Rob and Darrin </p>
<p>[rarely] acted without [first considering] the
C D
consequences. [No error]
E</p>
<p>Explanation given by collegeboard:
CORRECT! Here's why:</p>
<p>The error in this sentence occurs at (A), where there is inappropriate word choice. For the comparison to make sense, "Unlike" should be used in place of "Whereas."</p>
<p>Hint given by collegeboard on website:
Think about what is being compared in the sentence.</p>
<p>Although the whereas sounded awkward, I didn't think it was wrong, thus I put no error. Can someone outline when it is appropriate to use whereas and when to use unlikely, and any other similar problems likely to occur on the SAT. Thanks</p>
<p>edit: formatting of question came out weird, but each part in brackets is the answer choices in order from A through E</p>
<p>I also noticed this too, but I having a feeling that the sentence modified like this would be correct (not 100% sure though):</p>
<p>Wheres their friend Sean often behaved as if he had only one day left to live, Rob and Darrin rarely acted without first considering the consequences. (I deleted the "who")</p>
<p>Can someone correct me as to whether I'm right about that or not?</p>
<p>Sorry, I don't know exactly when to use "whereas", etc. and I don't want to give you the wrong information about it. </p>
<p>It might help to deleted the content within the commas and read the sentence. "Whereas their friend Sean, Rob and Darrin rarely acted without first considering the consequences." You can definitely tell that there's something funky going on! A rule of thumb that I like to follow: read the sentences without any prepositional phrases and see if it still makes sense. Often, they'll trick you using the whole preposition-confusion dealio. I hope this helps.</p>
<p>Excuse my ignorance of actual grammar terms, but the problem is that "whereas" requires a subject and a verb. Consider these rewordings:</p>
<p>He did his homework, unlike his brother.
He did his homework, whereas his brother.</p>
<p>The second makes no sense. You would have to append a "would not" to the end of the it. The sentence in the question has no main verb, just a modifying phrase, "who often behaved . . ." If you change it to a main verb, it makes more sense:</p>
<p>Whereas their friend Sean often behaved as if he had only one day left to live, Rob and Darrin rarely acted without first considering the consequences.</p>
<p>And putting conjunctions in front of sentences is perfectly fine as it can connect ideas cross-sentence. It may be frowned upon, but the College Board won't mark "While I wouldn't do it, others would" as wrong.</p>