Idioms

Link of the Day

On July 7th, 1912, Jim Thorpe won the gold medal for the Pentathlon in 1912 Olympics. Born on May 28th, 1887, on a Sac-and-Fox Indian reservation, James Francis Thorpe grew up to be one of the greatest all-around athletes of all time. In addition to competing at the Olympics, Thorpe also played professional baseball and founded the American Professional Football Association (which later morphed into the NFL). He was an incredibly talented athlete and he would make a great historical "Excellent Example"for your essay. You can learn more about Jim Thorpe here.

7/7 Improving Sentences

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

When you are working on an "Improving Sentences" problem, always carefully read the sentence as it is and look for an error. If possible, always try to predict a way to fix the sentence. Even though your prediction may not match the correct answer (there are often several different ways to fix an error), it will help you to identify the key grammatical principles that are being tested.

Africa is not nearly so mountainous as in Asia.

This problem tests your knowledge of idioms. Remember that an idiom is just the way you use a given set of words. As it is written, the sentence is not clear. The word "in" is confusing. Clearly, Africa is not "in" Asia. In this case, the sentence should read "as mountainous as . . .." Now, take a look at the answers and select the answer choice that matches your prediction.

(A) so mountainous as in

(B) that mountainous as

(C) equally mountainous to

(D) as mountainous as

(E) that mountainous as in

As you can see, (D) matches your prediction exactly. In this case you just have to know the idiom. That is why it is so important that you make flashcards and memorize the commonly tested idioms.

The correct Answer Choice is (D).

On sat.collegeboard.org 86% of the responses were correct.


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