攻克句子改错题(15)

高等英语考试中攻克句子改错题,最全的语法详解

original mistakes. They are wordy and they avoid identifying Pierre as the performer of the action. Answer choice D looks much better; it’s short and thereare no red-flag phrases or words, such as having been or is, that suggest the passive voice. Suppose you suspect that D is the right answer; if you plug it back into the sentence, as you should always do, you get, Pierre observed thediners and motels of middle America, and his depiction of these sights in his trendy paintings. This newly created sentence is actually a fragment, and therefore grammatically unacceptable.

So you come to E: brief, clear, to the point, and entirely devoid of the passive voice. Does it check out? Pierre observed the diners and motels of middle America, and depicted these sights in his trendy paintings. Yes. E avoids

wordiness, names Pierre as the performer of the action, and is a grammaticallycorrect sentence.

The Little Three

In addition to the Big Five, you’ll likely see a question once in a while that dealswith one of these three concepts:

Conjunctions

Fragments

Coordination and subordination

We call these the Little Three, and below we explain them all.

1. Conjunctions

Conjunctions are connecting words such as and, but, that, and or. They help linktwo parts of a sentence together. Suppose you have two sentences:

Abigail jumped off her horse. She then dove into a pool of deep water.

A conjunction such as and enables you to connect the two halves of the

sentence:

Abigail jumped off her horse and into a pool of deep water.