Idioms

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Maria Luisa Bombal wrote "highly poetic works about women trapped within the constraints of a patriarchal society" and blurs the lines between realism and fantasy. 

4/8 Improving Sentences

Part or all of the following sentence is underlined; beneath are five ways of phrasing the underlined material. Select the option that produces the best sentence. If you think the original phrasing produces a better sentence than any of the alternatives, select choice A. 

Always read the sentence before looking at the answer choice so that you can make a prediction. Remember not to look at choice A until last; since it is the same as the original sentence, it is a waste of your time. 

Chilean novelist and short-story writer Maria Luisa Bombal wrote innovative and influential stories about heroines which create fantasy worlds in order to escape from unfulfilling love relationships and restricted social roles. 

There are only three words in the underlined portion of this sentence, so it will be easy to check each of them individually. First, "heroines" is the plural form of "heroine," a female hero. Always include the "e" on the end of the word! "Heroines" is also the object of the preposition "about" and the subject of the relative clause that extends to the end of the sentence. The verb of the clause is "create," which is plural to match "heroines," so both of those words are used correctly. 

Next, look at "which." "Which" is a relative pronoun, so it introduces a clause that relates to a specific noun in the sentence. When you see a word like "who," "whom," "which," or "that," always check to which noun the clause connects. In this case, it is "heroines." "Which" should never refer to a person! Use "who" or "whom" for people and "which" or "that" for things. Now that you have a prediction, look at the answer choices. 

A) heroines which create

B) heroines, they create

C) heroines, they created

D) heroines who create

E) heroines that were creating

The answer is D. 

On sat.collegeboard.org, 76% of responses were correct. 

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