by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 1, 2013 | ACT English/SAT Writing
The SAT and ACT do test a version of the “who vs. whom” rule, but only at a relatively superficial level. There are only two things you need to know:
1) Whom should not come before a verb
2) Whom should come after a preposition
For example:
Many people are familiar with the story of how the Pilgrim settlers met a Pawtuxet
tribe member named Squanto whom befriended them, taught them how to survive in
their new wilderness home, showed them how to plant crops, and acted as an interpreter
with the Wampanoag tribe and its chief, Massasoit.
A. NO CHANGE
B. which befriended
C. who befriended
D. and befriending
Yes, “who vs. whom” is clearly being tested here, but there’s a decent chance that you can hear that whom befriended sounds extremely awkward, and that who befriended sounds a lot better.
In grammatical terms, the simplest version of the rule here is that whom should never be used right before a verb. (Befriend is a verb because you can say to befriend). That’s it. In order to apply the rule, you do need to be able to accurately recognize verbs, but if you can do that, you’re pretty much set.
Now, here’s part two of what you’re likely to see.
Many people are familiar with the story of how the Pilgrim settlers met Squanto, a
Pawtuxet tribe member from whom they learned about planting crops and surviving
in the New World.
A. NO CHANGE
B. from who
C. by which
D. from which
There are two straightforward rules being tested here:
1) Who and whom = people; which = thing
2) Whom, not who, must follow a preposition
Therefore:
C and D can be easily eliminated because which should only refer to things.
B is incorrect because from is a preposition, and prepositions should be followed by whom, not who.
That leaves A, which correctly uses whom.
Generally speaking, the SAT and ACT are a lot more interested in testing whether people know the basics of correct English and are able to recognize flagrant mistakes than with how well they know complex grammar rules.
That means you’re exceedingly unlikely to see a question that looks like this:
Many people are familiar with the story of how the Pilgrim settlers met Squanto, a
Pawtuxet tribe member who they encountered shortly after arriving in the New World.
A. NO CHANGE
B. whom they encountered
C. which they encountered
D. they encountered him
To answer this question, you need to be able to recognize that the correct answer is the direct object of the verb encounter – that is, you would say encounter him (object pronoun), not encounter he (subject pronoun).
Whom is correct because it is an object pronoun, whereas who is a subject pronoun. Only an object pronoun can replace an object pronoun (him —-> whom).
But again, the chance of your encountering a question that tests the rule at this level of subtlety is so small that it’s not even really worth worrying about.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 7, 2013 | ACT English/SAT Writing, Blog
When a lot of students start studying for ACT English/SAT Writing, one of the first things they often wonder is whether they actually really need to read the entire passage, or whether it’s ok to just skip from question to question.
My answer?
A resounding yes and no. That is, yes, they have to read everything, no they can’t just skip from question to question.
Here’s why:
ACT English and SAT multiple-choice Writing are context-based tests. Sometimes you’ll be asked about grammar, and sometimes you’ll be asked about content and structure. Both kinds of questions are often dependent on the surrounding sentence, however. A question testing verb tense may have four answers that are acceptable in isolation but only one answer that’s correct in context. If you don’t look at the surrounding sentences and see that they’re in the past, you might not realize that the verb in question has to be in the past as well.
Furthermore, it’s often impossible to answer rhetoric questions without a general knowledge of the paragraph or passage. If you’ve been reading the passage all along, you’re a lot more likely to be able to spot answers immediately since you’ll be able to tell whether a given choice is or is not consistent with the passage. If, on the other hand, you suddenly start reading surrounding sentences, you’re more likely to miss important information because you don’t have the full context for them.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 22, 2012 | ACT English/SAT Writing, Blog
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/the-most-comma-mistakes/?hp
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 3, 2012 | ACT English/SAT Writing
This is another one of those finicky little rules that have the potential to show up on the SAT and ACT. It’s an annoying one because it involves not one but two kinds of punctuation, in this case commas and parentheses (which aren’t tested all that frequently), but it’s not overly tricky to apply. In fact, if you look back at the previous sentence, you’ll see that I just used it.
Here’s the whole rule:
It is never acceptable to use a comma before an open parenthesis, but it is sometimes acceptable to use a comma after a close parenthesis.
In other words, the construction below is always incorrect:
Incorrect: The Caribbean Sea contains some of the world’s most stunning coral reefs, (which are home to thousands of species of marine life) but many of them are in danger because of overfishing and pollution.
It also means that you cannot do the following: (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 25, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing, Blog
The ACT English section tests both reading and writing skills simultaneously, and it is necessary to change your approach based on the type of question you are being asked. While grammar questions require you to recall specific rules, rhetoric questions require you to apply specific concepts about how paragraphs and essays work: what makes an effective transition (what is the logical relationship between two ideas?); how a paragraph is most logically developed; and what constitutes relevant vs. irrelevant information.
Unlike grammar questions, rhetoric questions can be absolutely, perfectly grammatically correct yet still be wrong. You can’t be fooled by how they sound — you actually have to think (yes, think!) about whether they go along with the main idea of the passage or paragraph in question.
In short, they’re reading questions, not writing questions. And because this is the case, you have to treat them like reading questions.
That means going back to the passage, figuring out the gist of the section you’re being asked to deal with, and figuring out what sort of information would be relevant.
One of the biggest mistakes I consistently see people make on rhetoric questions is to start by looking at the answers and assuming they’ll remember the content well enough to sort everything out rather than going back to the passage and working out the answer for themselves beforehand.
When most people read the passages as they’re working through the questions, though, they’re usually only really paying attention to grammar rather than content. They’re not thinking about main ideas and supporting information but rather about whether that comma in #27 was really supposed to be there. So when they’re asked to insert/delete information, they don’t really have the full context for it.
Remember: the readings on the English section are pretty simple. It’s usually not too hard to figure out their main idea and thus whether a particular sentence or part of a sentence should be used to support it. Yes, it may take a whole 30 seconds, but that’s time better spent actually figuring out the answer than staring at two options and trying to decide between them. So to sum up:
1) Read the question and identify exactly what you’re being asked to insert or delete.
2) Go back to the passage and read as much as you need to figure out the main idea of the passage or paragraph. For questions that ask about the passage as a whole, check the title: it’s there to tell you what the passage is about. For questions that ask you about the middle of a paragraph, read the topic sentence. Conversely, if you’re asked to insert the first sentence of a paragraph, jump ahead and read the middle of the paragraph.
3) Ask yourself whether the information in question is relevant to that topic and why/why not.
4) Look at the answers. The right one should pretty much pop out at you.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 8, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing, SAT Grammar (Old Test)
Present perfect = has written
The present perfect is used to describe an action that began in the past and that is continuing into the present. It is usually used in conjunction with the words for and since, which serve as “tip-offs” that this tense is required.
Correct: Leslie Marmon Silko has written best-selling novels since 1977.
Correct: Leslie Marmon Silko has written best-selling novels for more than thirty years.
Although these sentences describe actions that began in the past, they both clearly imply that that Leslie Marmon Silko is *still* a best-selling author.
Simple past = wrote
The simple past is used to describe an action that began and ended in the past.
Correct: Leslie Marmon Silko wrote her first best-selling novel in 1977.
OR
Correct: Leslie Marmon Silko was twenty-nine years old when she published her first novel.
On the SAT, sentences that require the simple past typically include a date or time period that clearly indicates a past action or event (e.g. 1815, The Renaissance, etc.).
Past perfect = had written
This is the tense that people tend to have the hardest time with. It is used only in the following case: when you have two finished actions in the past, the past perfect is used to describe the one that happened first.
In other words, if a sentence does not clearly indicate two separate actions, you should not use the past perfect!
Correct: Before Leslie Marmon Silko published her first best-selling novel in 1977, she had already written a number of well-regarded short stories.
Action #1: Leslie Marmon Silko published a number of well-regarded short stories.
Action #2: Leslie Marmon Silko wrote her first best-selling novel in 1977.
The past perfect is therefore used to describe the first action.
Under no circumstances is the following correct:
Incorrect: Before Leslie Marmon Silko had published her first best-selling novel in 1977, she wrote a number of well-regarded short stories.
