The SAT Prep Black Book(141)
Page 410, Question 22
A lot of students don’t like the way this sentence is written, but there’s nothing grammatically wrong with it, so the answer is (E).
Most people who miss this choose (C) incorrectly, but “at too great a distance” is an acceptable phrase, because it doesn’t break any rules:
o“distance” is a noun
o“great” is an adjective, so it can be used to describe a noun
o“too” is an adverb, so it can be used to describe the adjective “great”
o“at” is an appropriate preposition for the word “distance”
This one is a good example of how important it is to remember that we’re only concerned with SAT grammar for Identifying Sentence Errors questions; it doesn’t matter if we think we could rephrase the sentence in a way that would be more stylistically pleasing.
Page 410, Question 23
For this one, (C) is the problem because “is released” needs to be “are released” in order to agree with “spears,” which is plural. Once more we see that the College Board is trying to get us to overlook a mis-match between singular and plural phrases. Remember how repetitive the SAT is, and how important it is to read everything carefully!
Page 410, Question 24
A lot of test-takers think something is wrong with this sentence, but if we read it carefully we’ll see that everything in it is actually okay, so (E) is the answer. Test-takers are often worried about (D) being in the passive voice, but the College Board doesn’t consider the passive voice to be a grammatical mistake, as this question (along with many others) clearly demonstrates.
Page 410, Question 25
The correct phrase should be “capable of distinguishing,” so (C) is the mistake here. This question is an example of the kind of prepositional idiom that the College Board occasionally tests. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can learn from this question, because it’s unlikely that the College Board will revisit this particular idiom when you take the test for real, since there are thousands of prepositional idioms and different ones show up on each test.
Page 410, Question 26
Though most people would say a sentence like this in real life and not think twice about it, the word “their” is plural, which doesn’t work because the town’s name is technically singular. A correct phrase would be “its residents,” so (D) is the mistake. This is one more case of the College Board hoping you won’t notice a mismatch between singular and plural phrases. It’s also a good example of how a sentence can be incorrect on the SAT even though it would seem perfectly normal to an educated speaker of English in real life.
Page 410, Question 27
Nothing is wrong with this sentence, though students often think there is. The phrase “long since forgotten” is acceptable, and the phrase “crafted by artisans” is also okay, even though it’s in the passive voice, because the College Board doesn’t consider the passive voice to be a grammatical problem. (E) is the correct answer.
Page 410, Question 28
Here, the word “requires” should be “require,” in order to agree with “grades,” so (D) is the answer. This is another example of the College Board hoping you won’t notice that a singular verb has been paired with a plural subject.
Page 410, Question 29
The problem with the original version of the sentence is that it compares a “story” to a person, “Hank Aaron.” Remember that the College Board requires us to compare stories to stories or people to people, but it doesn’t let us compare stories to people, so (D) is the mistake. A correct form might have been “than the story of baseball’s great hitter,” because then we’d be comparing one story to another story.
Conclusion
As you can see, the key to doing well on these Identifying Sentence Errors questions is to train yourself to look for the same handful of grammatical issues over and over in a variety of settings. It’s also very important to think only in terms of actual rules being broken, rather than in general terms of “awkwardness,” because the critical issue in any question is going to be a specific rule of SAT grammar, not a loosely defined concept like awkwardness.
Video Demonstrations
If you’d like to see videos of some sample solutions like the ones in this book, please visit http://www.SATprepVideos.com. A selection of free videos is available for readers of this book.
A Selection of Challenging Questions
We’ve now completed an entire section of Identifying Sentence Error questions. Let’s take a look at some of the more challenging questions from the second edition of the College Board’s Official SAT Study Guide, the Blue Book.