<p>I will always remember you standing by me offering me encouragement.</p>
<p>I put no error, but apparently "you" should be changed to "your". can someone explain why???</p>
<p>also another question:</p>
<p>"The child is ‘neither encouraged to be critical or to examine’ all the evidence before forming an opinion.</p>
<p>a) neither encouraged to be critical or to examine
b) neither encouraged to be critical nor to examine (what i put)
c) either encouraged to be critical or to examine
d) encouraged either to be critical nor to examine
e) not encouraged either to be critical or to examine (right answer)</p>
<p>can some please explain to me why E is the right answer??? :)</p>
<p>“standing” is a gerund. On the SAT, gerunds, when they take pronouns, must take genitive (possessive) pronouns.</p>
<p>B) is not parallel. E) is.</p>
<p>B) is not parallel because the structure must be “neither [A] nor **” and in this sentence [A] is “encouraged to be critical” (a past tense verb phrase) and ** is “to examine” (an infinitive verb phrase)–in other words, the word “encouraged” should be before the word “neither.”</p>
<p>thanks! so when there’s a pronoun before a gerund, is that pronoun ALWAYS possessive?</p>
<p>Think of it this way. A gerund functions as a noun, and a possessive pronoun as an adjective.</p>
<p>To remember what to do replace the gerund with a noun … as for example “book”. Would you say “you book” or “your book”? Certainly “your book”. So do the same for the gerund.</p>
<p>The “rule” is not specific to the SAT. It’s basic English grammar.</p>
<p>For the second question:</p>
<p>The child is [neither encouraged to be critical or to examine] all the evidence before forming an opinion.</p>
<p>a) neither encouraged to be critical or to examine
b) neither encouraged to be critical nor to examine
c) either encouraged to be critical or to examine
d) encouraged either to be critical nor to examine
e) not encouraged either to be critical or to examine</p>
<p>The issue is not a structural one with “parallel construction”. It’s really one of capturing the meaning correctly.</p>
<p>My sense of the meaning is that:</p>
<p>(1) The child must not be critical until after he examines all the evidence.
and also that
(2) The child must not form an opinion until after he examines all the evidence.</p>
<p>Neither choice (c) nor choice (e) says that in a simple fashion. It would take most people a minute or two to conclude whether or not (c) or (e) captures the meaning. This question comes from Barron’s. It’s not well posed. There’s not much to be learned from trying to figure it out since the SAT doesn’t create a jumble like this.</p>
<p>The above question is one of the many examples where they come up with sentences that are awful no matter which you pick in a desperate attempt to test a specific point. I found myself wanting to rewrite most of the sentences on the SAT.</p>
<p>While that might be a more spectacularly awful question than would appear on the actual test, the SAT isn’t without its stupidities.</p>