ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

ACT English 3.1 Passage Drill 194 Views


Share It!


Description:

ACT English: Passage Drill Drill 3, Problem 1. Where does "however" best fit into this sentence?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by

00:06

strong winds. Not the kind brought on by beans.

00:18

How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all?

00:22

Strong winds are powerful enough to lift animals, people, trees, and houses, however, such as

00:27

those in a tornado or hurricane.

00:38

This question requires us to know a dangling modifier when we see one. Lucky for us, they're easy to spot.

00:43

Whenever we find a modifying word or phrase that's a long way from the thing it's

00:47

trying to describe, we know we have a dangling modifier on our hands.

00:50

The underlined portion has a good example of this grammatical no-no.

00:54

The phrase "such as those in a tornado or hurricane" is trying to describe "strong

00:59

winds." But it's having a tough time doing so because there's a lot of sentence in between.

01:03

Remember: to avoid confusion, it's best to place the modifier directly before or after

01:08

the thing it's describing. Since our underlined portion fails to do this, we can eliminate choice (A).

01:14

Choices (C) and (D) both avoid this mistake. In each option, "strong winds" is immediately

01:19

followed by "such as those in a tornado or hurricane."

01:22

The trouble is that both choices misplace the word "however," which should be at

01:26

the beginning of the sentence because it addresses a contrast with the previous sentence. Thus,

01:30

we can cross out both (C) and (D).

01:32

Choice (B) is the best answer because it correctly places "however" at the beginning of the

01:36

sentence and is blissfully free of dangling modifiers.

01:39

A tornado, followed by a bunch of frogs bashing into people's heads seems like a cruel one-two

01:43

punch from Mother Nature.

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?