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ACT English 4.7 Passage Drill 177 Views


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Description:

ACT English: Passage Drill 4, Problem 7. Which form of "own" works best in this sentence?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Hong Kong Noodle Company.

00:07

Which went out of business when King Kong Noodle Co. squished it flat.

00:22

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

00:26

owning?

00:29

And here are the potential answers...

00:34

The second part of the sentence is a modifier for "a Chinese-American named David (Tsung) Jung."

00:42

(No relation to Carl Jung, we’re guessing...but crazier things have happened.)

00:46

It’s this modifier’s job to describe Jung by telling us that he owned

00:52

the Hong Kong Noodle Company in L.A.

00:54

Currently, however, the modifier just isn’t getting the job done.

00:57

Choice (A) suggests the word “owning,”

00:59

but this makes it sound like Jung currently owns the Company.

01:02

The passage makes it clear that fortune cookies were invented a long time ago, so we highly

01:06

doubt Jung is still on the planet. Hopefully, he’s still making fortune cookies in that

01:11

big noodle company in the sky.

01:15

If context weren’t enough to cut this option, the verb “invented” also makes it clear

01:20

that we should speak of Jung in the past tense. Choice (A) is officially nixed.

01:25

Option (D).

01:26

(D) gives us the phrase “being the owner of.”

01:29

This has the same present tense connotations as (A), so we’re sure it’s wrong.

01:34

It’s also too wordy, which Jung would hate if the succinct messages in fortune cookies

01:38

are an indication of his literary taste.

01:42

We’ve narrowed our options down to (B) and (C).

01:45

Both are in the past tense, so they’ve got that going for them.

01:47

However, they’re having a disagreement over the use of the pronouns “who” and “whom.”

01:53

A lot of people get mixed up with this, but it’s pretty simple when broken down.

01:56

The trick is knowing that “who” is in the subjective case and “whom” is in the object.

02:06

Subjective? Objective? Whaaa? No worries; it’s simple.

02:10

The subject of a clause is the person, place, or thing that’s doing something, while the

02:14

object is the person, place, or thing having something done to it.

02:21

Take this sentence for example: “Zoe loves her pet chinchilla.”

02:25

Zoe is the one doing the loving, so she’s the subject.

02:29

Her pet chinchilla, on the other hand, is the one receiving the love, making it the object.

02:34

(We’re not sure if the chinchilla loves Zoe, but it’s probably none of our business.)

02:38

OK, let’s zoom back to the Hong Kong Noodle Company and figure out this who/whom thing.

02:43

Both of these pronouns are trying to stand in for Jung, right?

02:46

We’ll sub in Jung’s name and read the clause out loud to help us determine if the

02:51

blank requires the subjective or objective case.

02:55

“Jung owned the Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles.”

02:58

Here, Jung is the subject because he’s the one owning something, while the Hong Kong

03:03

Noodle Company is the object because it’s the thing being owned.

03:07

Since Jung is the subject, the pronoun that stands in for him has to be in the subjective case.

03:12

Thus, we declare choice (B) the correct answer

03:14

because the sentence requires the subjective pronoun “who.”

03:17

We also need to stop binge watching Dr. Who,

03:20

but that’s a personal struggle we’ll deal with on our own.

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