Sentence Structure

Link of the Day

The 2012 Olympic Games have proven to be historic in more than one regard. One landmark is the fact that these Games are the first in which every country has sent both male and female athletes. Most notable is the nation of Saudi Arabia, which was nearly barred from sending male competitors if it did not also send female athletes and finally agreed only two weeks before the start of the Olympics. Because participation in sports (among many other things) is severely restricted for Saudi women, the two athletes who were accepted into the Olympics did not actually have high enough scores to qualify--not that it mattered, as screaming crowds cheered them on. Instead, the International Olympic Committee admitted them under the Olympics' universality clause, which "allows athletes who didn't meet qualifying times to compete when their participation is deemed important for reasons of equality." This clause has been used in the past to promote participation from underrepresented nations. Read more here and here.

8/9 Identifying Sentence Errors

The following sentence contains either a single error or no error at all. If the sentence contains an error, select the one underlined part that must be changed to make the sentence correct. If the sentence contains no error, select choice E.

The Knowsys method for identifying sentence errors requires you to read the original sentence to yourself, listening for errors.  Quickly check each underlined portion of the sentence against The Big 8 Grammar Rules.  Identify and mark any error, being sure to check all of the underlined portions of the sentence for errors before moving on to the next question.

AOne of the northernmost countries Bof Europe, CFinland's borders are Russia on the east, Sweden on the west, Dand the tip of Norway on the north. ENo error

(A) is correct because even though this sentence mentions other countries, it is primarily concerned with only one: Finland. (B) is a prepositional phrase modifying “countries” that is correctly placed next to the noun it modifies. (C) does not contain any glaring errors in the underlined portion, but examine this section within the context of the whole sentence.  When you have an introductory phrase followed by a comma, the very next independent noun must be the subject of that phrase.  The introductory phrase informs you that the subject must be a country, but instead of the word “Finland,” it is followed by “Finland’s borders.” “Finland’s borders” is not a country, so (C) contains an error. (D) is correct because three countries that form the borders for Finland are listed, and lists require a conjunction before the final member of the list.

The correct answer is (C).

On sat.collegeboard.org, 52% of responses were correct. 

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