On the GMAT, sentences that employ a modifying phrase incorrectly are a common trick. A modifying phrase is one that describes something. Here are a couple of examples of uncomplicated sentences that incorrectly use modifying phrases:
\nSentence A:<\/p>\n
Sentence A starts off with the modifying phrase \u201cEver since her paw was crushed in the front door,\u201d and then talks about Mrs. Benson and her worry for her cat. But Mrs. Benson sounds like a person, and as a person, she probably doesn\u2019t have a paw to be crushed. It\u2019s MUCH more likely that Muffin\u2019s paw got crushed, causing Mrs. Benson\u2019s worry. This sentence needs to be corrected to put the modifying phrase next to the item it modifies. Here are a couple of ways that we can do that, depending on where the sentence\u2019s underlining is placed:
\nSentence A1:<\/p>\n
If the modifying phrase isn\u2019t underlined, we don\u2019t have the opportunity to fix it– but we can rearrange the rest of the sentence so that the thing that is modified (Muffin the cat) is placed next to that phrase. The corrected version might look like this:
\nSentence A2:<\/p>\n
By turning \u201cMrs. Benson\u201d into the possessive \u201cMrs. Benson\u2019s,\u201d and then placing \u201cpet cat Muffin\u201d right behind it, we turn \u201cMrs. Benson\u2019s pet cat Muffin\u201d into the sentence\u2019s subject and put the modifying phrase right next to the thing it modifies, where it belongs. But what if it\u2019s the modifying phrase itself that is underlined? Here\u2019s an example of how that would look and how it would be fixed:
\nSentence A3:<\/p>\n
Sentence A4:<\/p>\n
In Sentence A3, the modifying phrase uses the pronoun \u201cher,\u201d which could technically refer to either Mrs. Benson or to Muffin. That makes the modifying phase\u2019s placement confusing. By changing the modifying phrase so that it clearly identifies both \u201cshe\u201d and \u201cthe poor feline,\u201d and describes Mrs. Benson, we correct any confusion from the placement of the modifying phrase.
\nLet\u2019s try another, slightly more difficult example:
\nSentence B:<\/p>\n
The modifying phrase here is \u201cwhich is a frequent cause of school cancellations and traffic accidents in the winter months.\u201d But that\u2019s placed next to \u201cthe Midwest,\u201d and the location isn\u2019t what causes the winter weather problems; the snowstorms are causing the problems. So the sentence needs to be corrected to account for that. Here are a couple of ways to do that:
\nSentence B:<\/p>\n
Sentence B2:<\/p>\n
Here we\u2019ve made \u201c[s]nowstorms\u201d the clear subject of the sentence, and changed the structure of the sentence so that there is a parenthetical phrase describing snowstorms immediately after that subject.
\nSentence B:<\/p>\n
Sentence B4:<\/p>\n
In this version of Sentence B, the modifying phrase has been reworded so that it now clearly describes the Midwest, not the snowstorms.
\nIn all of the examples above, the central issue in identifying the proper sentence correction is the placement of the underline. Be very conscious of that in your reading; anytime you see a modifying phrase, you should immediately check to make sure that it is correctly placed to modify its subject, and then determine what you can change, based on the underlining. And remember, there\u2019s almost always more than one way to reach the goal of grammatical correctness. If your predicted \u201cfix\u201d isn\u2019t among the answer choices, keep an open mind when you evaluate the choices to see which one accomplishes the goal of correct modifying phrase placement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the GMAT, sentences that employ a modifying phrase incorrectly are a common trick. A modifying phrase is one that describes something. Here are a couple of examples of uncomplicated sentences that incorrectly use modifying phrases: Sentence A: Ever since her paw was crushed in the front door, Mrs. Benson has been worried about Muffin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28910,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[55],"tags":[56,241],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}