ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

ACT English 2.11 Passage Drill 236 Views


Share It!


Description:

ACT English: Passage Drill 2, Problem 11. Which of the following sentences would make the most effective transition?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by a sense of foreboding. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

00:32

The writer would like to insert an additional sentence here in order to create a better

00:35

transition to the following paragraph. Which of the following would make the most effective transition?

00:48

The clues here are the words "however" and "soon realized" in the first sentence of Paragraph

00:53

4, which signal a contrast to the previous sentence. Whichever sentence the writer chooses

00:58

to cap Paragraph 3 with needs a different tone than Paragraph 4's slightly ominous

01:03

intro sentence. As soon as we hear that the cat doesn't like water, we know there's a bad moon on the rise.

01:09

So if we're going to get the shift in tone we're looking for, the new sentence needs to sound reasonably hopeful.

01:16

Choice (A) fails because it sounds too ominous. When we hear the sentence, "Little did I

01:20

know what lay ahead," it makes us think a dude's around the corner with a knife.

01:25

Or worse... a mother-in-law is dropping by for a surprise visit.

01:29

Anyway, (A) doesn't contrast the first sentence in Paragraph 4, so we can cross it out.

01:35

Choice (B) is a definite no because it's even more ominous than (A). It straight-up

01:39

says that something went "terribly wrong." Most people wouldn't call that positive

01:44

unless they're the sorts who like when bad things happen to them.

01:49

Choice © doesn't work because the flow of logic is off. The sentence that will directly

01:52

precede this new sentence is talking about all the stuff the writer got together in preparation

01:58

for his or her kitty-bathing adventure. Thus, it feels a bit disjointed to jump from there

02:02

to talking about how the cat needs to be cleaned as soon as possible.

02:06

Choice (D) wins the day with the sentence, "We were ready for business." This flows

02:11

logically from the preceding sentence and has the necessary positive connotation.

02:17

Anybody who can be positive about bathing a cat is either certifiable, or the most positive thinker of all time.

Up Next

ACT English 2.2 Punctuation
2058 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 2. Where should the semi-colon be placed?

Related Videos

ACT English 3.1 Punctuation
1056 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 1. How should this sentence be changed so that it is grammatically correct?

ACT English 3.2 Punctuation
950 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 2. How should we properly hyphenate the words in this sentence?

ACT English 3.4 Punctuation
509 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 4. Which choice best formats this list of items?

ACT English 2.1 Punctuation
509 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 1. Which choice of punctuation best completes the sentence?