The mistake will be written in capital letters, just an fyi!
"An early American film star, Pearl White starred in several SERIALS WHOSE EPISODES HAD SUSPENSEFUL ENDINGS that enticed audiences to return for the next instalment.
A. serials whose episodes had suspenseful endings
B. serials, their episodes had suspenseful endings
C. serials, which had episodes ending suspenseful
D. serials of whose episodes the suspenseful endings
E. serials, each of these episodes had a suspenseful ending
I thought the answer was C because the serials are objects, not people right? But the actual answer is A. Can someone please explain to me why? Thank you!
It is a myth that the word “whose” must refer only to people. All the major grammar authorities agree that pairing “whose” with objects is perfectly sound English.
@WasatchWriter is absolutely right. “Whose” can apply to non-human nouns: The town, whose last three mayors had resigned in disgrace, decided to operate as a collective rather than a hierarchical administration.
@gameplayer1234 Unlike the other answers, “ending” here is used as a participle, which means it is still a kind of verb. That means anything that modifies it must be an adverb. “Suspenseful” is an adjective; what would be required here is “suspensefully.”
But really, it just sounds terrible. The most successful test-takers don’t work out their answers. They trust their ears because their ears are almost always correct.
I disagree with this, btw. Even the smartest, most educated kids I know struggle to do better than 750 in W by trusting their ears. The test, after all, is designed to thwart that kind of “intuitive grammar.”
@marvin100 is correct that going by ear is not a complete strategy. What I think I meant is that it’s very time consuming to work out the technical explanation for every possible answer, and that experienced readers should be able to eliminate 1-2 possibilities by ear alone, leaving time to concentrate on the trickier answers.
Yeah, I agree with that, @WasatchWriter