ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

ACT English 4.11 Passage Drill 179 Views


Share It!


Description:

ACT English: Passage Drill 4, Problem 11. Which word fits best in this sentence?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by gentlemen.

00:06

It’s a more dignified breed of Shmoop du jour.

00:09

Check out the following passage...

00:20

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

00:27

And here are the potential answers...

00:31

The underlined segment definitely sounds wonky in this sentence. Let’s read it aloud.

00:36

“So, just how did them two gentlemen manage to get fortunes inside their cookies?”

00:42

See. Wonky.

00:43

This is because the pronoun “them” is trying to stand in for the noun “gentleman.”

00:48

However, the structure of the sentence makes it such that the noun is fine on its own.

00:53

It doesn’t need any pronouns taking its place.

00:56

We can definitely cut (A).

00:57

Options (D) and (C) have the same issue as (A).

01:00

“They” is a regular pronoun and “their” is a possessive pronoun.

01:05

The possessive pronoun is particularly wonky because,

01:07

as far as we know, these gentlemen didn’t belong to anyone but themselves.

01:11

The correct answer is (B), which gives us the word “these.”

01:15

In this sentence “these” is being used as a “demonstrative adjective.”

01:21

Here, it’s modifying “two gentlemen” by helping to specify which gentlemen we’re talking about.

01:25

Though we bet two gentlemen making fortune cookies wouldn’t be too hard to spot.

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?