SECTION G: GRAMMATICAL SENTENCES

Your Full Name:
*Required

Email Address:
*Required

Essay Question

Make corrections where they are needed in the following passages.

1. Identify whether the sentence that precedes the blank space is a fragment [A], a run-on [B], or correct [C].

 

Enter your answer in the text field and print this page before you submit your answers.

    Does anyone remember that the best picture award the first year academy awards were given in 1927-8 went to a film entitled Wings? The best actor: Emil Jannings in The Last Command? It is easy to remember films such as American Beauty, the 1999 award winner, or even Platoon, the 1985 winner, it is similarly easy to remember that Tom Hanks won an academy award for best actor for his role in Forrest Gump in 1994 and that Gwyneth Paltrow won the best actress award for her work in Shakespeare in Love in 1998 . But does anyone remember the name of the actress in Fargo who won the best actress award in 1996 or who won an acting award for The Accused in 1986? Funny isn't it . Short term memory? A Film's popularity is fleeting and even the best films are soon forgotten . Many will know of the 1939 winner Gone with the Wind, but fewer will know that Gigi won the award for 1958 and fewer still will have seen the film .

Enter your answer in the text field and print this page before you submit your answers.

    Early chairs in eastern Canada reflect the background of their makers and the styles of the times . A style such as the Carver, the slat-back, and the Windsor are seen in a variety of shapes and sizes in 18th and 19th century chairs . The Windsor is made in many places across Ontario in the late 18th and early 19th century . Some reflected the rounded character of the British country Windsor tradition; others take on distinctive characteristics that show how local craftsmen reinterpreted the styles . The bow-back Windsor, the style that everyone has in mind when thinking of a Windsor chair, should not be mistaken for the simpler and possibly more elegant continuous-arm Windsor style with its sweeping, graceful back . Chair styles take on interesting names that reflected the times . One Windsor chair was called the Birdcage Windsor, another an Arrow-back; some chairs are called Chicken Coop Windsor . The chicken coop chair, as well as the other styles of chairs, were a sign of the tastes and fashions of the small towns and villages across Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada . There was just as many variants to the chair styles as there were chair makers . Sitting in an old chair today, you should think of the past and its people .

---

3. Identify whether the sentence that precedes a blank space contains a pronoun-antecedent agreement error [A], a person agreement error [B], or is correct [C].

Enter your answer in the text field and print this page before you submit your answers.

    In his book The Early Furniture of French Canada, Jean Palardy makes it clear how profound a change the conquest of Quebec was when he notes that "all commercial and cultural ties with France were broken after the English conquest" (29). Thus, although the early furniture of Quebec echoed the French styles of Louis XIII, Régence, and Louis XV, after the conquest, they were influenced by American and English styles, which made their way into Quebec . For instance, as Palardy notes "In 1787, English chair-makers in Montreal and Quebec were making chairs and armchairs of yellow birch in the style of English Windsor chairs which they painted pale green"(29). By the middle of the 19th century, American chair styles were very popular in Quebec, as they were in the rest of eastern Canada . Each chair maker and craftsman were making chairs that echoed the styles popular in the rest America and Canada . A chair maker may have wished to make chairs that reflected the older French styles, but they were forced by the market demand for the newer styles . We may think it strange now how the people of Quebec seemed to abandon the styles of their forefathers, but, if you think about it, even today, we abandon that which is familiar and traditional and embrace the trends of the dominant forces that surround us .

---

4. Identify whether the sentence that precedes a blank space contains a misplaced modifier [A], a dangling modifier [B], or is correct [C].

Enter your answer in the text field and print this page before you submit your answers.

    One of the sad elements of our past is how little we appreciate its complexity and unique attributes until we have all but destroyed them . Much of the furniture of the 18th and 19th century was destroyed by people who saw it as primitive or old fashioned . Fashion can have a debilitating affect on society, which stems from the latest impulses and fads . Just as we are eager to mime the latest fashion and style in our dress and in the cars and fixtures we surround ourselves with, our earlier counterparts were also eager to cast off that which they had grown up with and grown tired of . Growing up on a farm, the early furniture was a reminder of old fashioned ways . A person could think that he or she was only the one who was surrounded by relics from the past . Looking at a room full of antiques in the morning, you might want to sell or, worse, burn the whole lot . Not knowing what to do, the antique dealer in town might be the last thing on a person's mind .

---

5. Identify whether the sentence that precedes a blank space contains faulty parallel structure [A], correct parallel structure [B], or no parallel structure [C].

Enter your answer in the text field and print this page before you submit your answers.

Today, going to antique stores, looking through garage sales, and country auctions are all ways of looking for the overlooked or undervalued gem . As has been said before, someone's else's white elephant may be your white gold . But it is not just finding a special piece of the past that is exciting; the past, after all, is in our minds, in our stories, and in our attics . We look everywhere for it but where it is . The past is something that is a part of us . It is not something we can ignore; it is something we need to accept . To understand who we are, to come to terms with our society, to accept how we relate to everything around us, and seeing ourselves clearly , we need to understand and accept our past, our heritage, and our culture .

---

Print this page before you submit your answers so that you may compare your answers with the answer sheet.