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AP English Literature and Composition 1.6 Passage Drill 5. Death is primarily characterized as what?
AP English Literature and Composition 1.4 Passage Drill 3. How is Burne's view of pacifism best characterized in lines 57 through 67?
AP English Literature and Composition 1.9 Passage Drill 4. Lines 32-34 are best understood to mean what?
ACT English 4.3 Grammar and Usage 277 Views
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Description:
ACT English: Grammar and Usage Drill 4, Problem 3. Which choice contains the correct pronoun for this sentence?
Transcript
- 00:04
Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by baby blankets. If you think those blankets
- 00:09
are cute now, just wait until they grow up.
- 00:12
How would you correct the following sentence, if it needs correcting at all?
- 00:15
The nursing staff welcomed me, thanked me for volunteering, and asked me to start folding
- 00:21
baby blankets and placing it in the appropriate drawer.
Full Transcript
- 00:33
Looks like we're going to have more fun identifying subjects and objects with this question.
- 00:37
Hey, don't judge the things that bring us joy.
- 00:41
In the last clause, the speaker is the subject, because he or she is the one doing something.
- 00:46
The verbs are "folding" and "placing" because that's what the speaker is doing.
- 00:50
And the "baby blankets" take the object position because they're the things getting folded
- 00:55
and placed.
- 00:56
This makes "it" the object pronoun, since it's standing in for baby blankets.
- 01:02
Unfortunately, "it" is doing a very bad job of being an object pronoun.
- 01:06
"Baby blankets" is plural, so the pronoun ought to be as well.
- 01:10
"It" is singular, therefore we can cross off choice (A), which is under the mistaken impression
- 01:15
that the original sentence is OK.
- 01:18
Knowing that the correct answer has to be an object makes choice (D) easy to eliminate as well.
- 01:23
"They" is a subject pronoun, and no matter how hard it tries it'll never pass for an
- 01:27
object. Choice (B) doesn't make the cut either.
- 01:30
"These" is usually used to distinguish between two nearby objects.
- 01:34
It's true that the speaker must've been near the blankets at some point, since he or she
- 01:38
folded them--unless the speaker has telekinetic powers.
- 01:44
However, the speaker is talking about his or her big baby blanket adventure in the past
- 01:49
tense, so we can assume that the speaker's not up to his of her elbows in them currently.
- 01:54
Choice (C) nails it, because "them" is plural and an object pronoun.
- 01:59
Painful admission: our Mom made us throw away our baby blanket. And we still resent her for it.
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