<p>I couldn’t figure out a certain writing question for Practice Test 1 in the Grubers Book. If you guys could give me the answer and a brief explanation that would be great.</p>
<p>We took a plane from JFK Airport that carried few passengers.</p>
<p>A.) We took a plane from JFK Airport that carried few passengers
B.) The plane that was taken by us from JFK Airport carries few passengers
C.) The plane that we took carried few passengers
D.) We took a plane that carried few passengers from JFK Airport
E.) The plane that we took from JFK Airport carried few passengers</p>
<p>I’d have to say E, because it directly implies that the plane took the passengers, instead of in D, where it could be thought of as “we” taking the passengers from the Airport, instead of the actual plane itself.</p>
<p>The College Board tests misplaced modifiers in a very specific way, and that is not it!</p>
<p>Okay, sorry for the exclamation points. Seriously though, run away from Grubers practice questions. It absolutely does not matter what the correct answer is to that question because you will never see a sentence like that on an actual SAT test.</p>
<p>ETA: you are stuck between D and E because they are both perfectly fine sentences that just happen to say different things. The SAT will never expect you to read the mind of the test writer to determine what a sentence is trying to say. For that matter, there is nothing wrong with choice C. Awful awful awful question. </p>
<p>And just to beat a dead horse, there is nothing terribly wrong with the original sentence. It could be written better, but it is still perfectly clear that that the plane came from JFK and carried few passengers.</p>
<p>However, E is clearly the best sentence among these choices. If you were actually writing this sentence, you probably would say, “There were few passengers on the plane we took from JFK Airport.”</p>
<p>I would advise using Erica Meltzer’s Ultimate Guide to SAT grammar. After I finished this book on the first practice test I took I scored a 710 when I had never previously got my writing score out of the 570-600 range while CR and Math were both in the 700s already</p>
<p>What is very important to understand is that every sentence, other than in the paragraph improvement section, is a stand alone sentence. There is no context provided or required to uncover the correct answer.</p>
<p>This Gruber’s question is a great example of what almost all 3rd party question writers get wrong. It includes grammatical sentences that have different meanings, thus requiring context to determine the correct answer. As Hunt has illustrated, it is not too difficult to figure out what the writer was trying to test. However, choice C is actually the most concise grammatical sentence. It is “clear and precise, without awkwardness or ambiguity”. Who says the information about JFK is required? The sentence must stand alone, context is irrelevant. Standing alone, there is no way for a reader to know that that individual sentence is missing something. Standing alone the sentence is fine. There is no College Board rule that says the first sentence contains all the facts and each choice must also include those facts.</p>
<p>There is also no College Board rule that says the meaning of the first sentence must be reflected in all the choices. Context is irrelevant, the correct answer need only be grammatical, clear and precise, without awkwardness or ambiguity. Who is to say where the author & co. got on the plane? Maybe they got on the plane at JFK, and traveled with few passengers, as seems to be the case in most of the sentence choices. Maybe, OTOH, they got on the plane in Chicago, and when they did so they noticed it carried few passengers from JFK, as seems to be the case in choice D. Context is irrelevant, therefore no one can say that choice D is wrong.</p>
<p>You will never have this dilemma with actual CB questions. Understanding why this question from Gruber’s is so bad can actually help you on the SAT. You need to focus like a laser beam on the construction of the individual sentences provided. Is it grammatical, clear and precise? Never ask yourself, ‘does the meaning match the original sentence?’ Keep reminding yourself that there is no context, all sentences stand alone. There will be something wrong with four of the five choices when looked at from this perspective, and if there isn’t, choose the sentence that is the most concise.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot for the help guys! Yeah, turns out the correct answer is E but I’ll start using the blue book and Erica’s guide instead. Thanks again!</p>