<p>I’m probably wrong, but I put “had begun” as the incorrect part of the manuscript question. </p>
<p>My logic was that it should have been “was beginning” so it would parallel the statement before “and”. I wanted to change it to “no error” at the end, but i didn’t really have time.</p>
<p>man, i think that the “had begun” question shoudl be thrown out. everyone has a good reason for what they had put.
anyways, i think that “had begun” is incorrect and this is my logic. many ppl have said that the manuscript had begun to disintegrate some time in the past, but how can anyone confirm that? could it not disintegrate now? therefore, you cant judge what the correct answer is by its meaning. instead, you’ll have to rely purely on grammar. And i think (emphasis on “i think”) proper grammar dictates that the two predicates around the word “and” have to be parallel, meaning that they have to start with the same verb tense, which in this case is past-tense (“was”) and not the past perfect tense.</p>
<p>and yeah, i also put “mortal” for vital b.c i thought he was trying to say that there might be some flaws in his “mortal” (human) memories. </p>
<p>again, this is just my guess. correct me if im wrong, but please gimme ur reasons. it woudl be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>Svimfreak - You are exactly right. Everyone does have a good reason for what they put. Therefore, “had begun” is not wrong (at least from the way you guys are remembering the sentence). Could you have also put another variation that “sounds” better? Sure, but the identify sentence error questions only want grammatically right answers. Because had begun is grammatically correct, the answer should be E.</p>
<p>Does anyone remember the entire wording of the grizzly bear question on Writing?</p>
<p>And did one of the sentence completion answers have the word cosmopolitan in it?</p>
<p>Yes, cosmopolitan was one of the choices, but I don’t think I put that as one of the answers. I might have forgotten though, lol. Everything seems fuzzy.</p>
<p>what was teh cosmopolitan question?</p>
<p><a href=“Purdue OWL® - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University”>Purdue OWL® - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University;
<p>It says that an action in the past perfect tense is completed before another action. The disintegration of the manuscript must not have been complete by the time the researchers got to it, so Im pretty sure that “had begun” is wrong.</p>
<p>Your claim is invalid. The manuscripts are old. Old manuscripts are in a process of disintegration. They are already old when the researchers found them. Thus they were already in a process of disintegration.</p>
<p>Get my logic?</p>
<p>Shouldnt the process of disintegration should be complete for a valid use of the past perfect?</p>
<p>any other reasons as to why “had begun” is correct or incorrect?</p>
<p>also, maybe this might help: “i was tired and had only begun to exercise” here, we see that teh predicates around “and” are not parallel, but the sentence is grammatically correct. this renders my former belief that teh predicates around “and” should be parallel incorrect. however, it makes sense in this context, but in our case, as johnclark has pointed out, it doesnt…i think</p>
<p>If you just think common sense, without all this technical grammar mumbo jumbo…</p>
<p>When you read the sentence with ‘had begun’, it sounds correct.
Keep in mind, this was not one of the last two or three questions in that section. (I believe it was about sixth or seventh to last.)
Usually the easy and medium questions are ones that the errors can be spotted by just reading the question and determining what doesn’t sound right.
I don’t think the College Board expect all of us to know about perfect and past perfect and whatever verbs… And being that it wasn’t the last or second to last problem in that section…</p>
<p>I don’t know, that’s my weird logic. I marked E, and it seems right to me.
I guess we’ll see come December.</p>
<p>“Shouldnt the process of disintegration should be complete for a valid use of the past perfect?”</p>
<p>If it said “had disintegrated.” The question said “had begun to disintegrate” meaning that they were in the process of disintegrating.</p>
<p>im an idiot…lol…i thought it was had began… thats why i put B</p>
<p>Does anyone remember the sentence completion that involved that guy getting stuff from his neighbors? I got confused =(</p>
<p>The answer to that question was pretext…the guy in the question was using borrowing a hose (or whatever it was) as a pretext (an excuse) to meeting his neighbors</p>
<p>writing isn’t organized by difficulty.</p>
<p>so what kind of score can i predict if ive missed 1 on math, 4 on CR, and 2 on writing?</p>
<p>They say it’s not, but it’s obvious that it is.</p>
<p>Plus, when I looked at College Board’s Official Student’s Guide to the PSAT’s practice test (that blue booklet that they give out in school), on the answer key, where they rank the difficulty of the questions… All of the Writing questions went from E to M to H with no exceptions.</p>
<p>About 72 CR, 77 M, 78 W… Selection Index about 227.</p>
<p>Even my English teacher told a group of us kids, who asked her about the “had begun” question, that there should habe been an error and that the manuscripts HAVE BEGUN to disintegrate.</p>
<p>Think about it, its not something that happened in the past. The framer of the question explicitly implies that as a result of blahblahblah, the manuscripts HAVE BEGUN to disintegrate. See, HAD BEGUN would mean that the process of disintegration already started and then it stopped for some reason.</p>
<p>EXAMPLE: I had begun to walk to school when I accidentally fell down the pothole.</p>
<p>In the PSAT question, the PROCESS DISINTEGRATION IS STILL CONTINUING, so shouldn’t it be “have negun”?</p>
<p>BTW ppl, you can’t just go by ear when doing the Writing section. If you go just by ear, you’ll get at least 6-8 questions wrong on the section, if not more. You have to DEFINITELY find out what is wrong/not wrong gramatically with a question.</p>