Improving Sentences - PSAT Writing

The use of the participle form "keeping" is incorrect without a version of the verb "to be," and needs to either be changed to a non-participle or have the version of "to be" added. This is the only issue with the sentence as it is written. Therefore, the correct answer choice is "keeps an extra pair of glasses."

The use of "having grown" in the sentence actually makes the sentence not have a verb, because the use of that verb creates a verbal phrase. The sentence needs the phrase "having grown" to be turned into an actual verb. Therefore, the correct answer choice is "Politicians have grown increasingly aware."

The use of "keeping" in the sentence is incorrect, as "keeping" needs some version of the verb "to be" to form a functioning verb. (In the phrase "the soldiers keeping watch," "keeping" is a participle.) The verb must be changed to a form that can work in the sentence. The only choice that does this and keeps the intended meaning is "The soldiers keep watch."

The original sentence is wordy and awkward. The correct answer is concise, active, and clear.

Sentences rarely start with “being.” Furthermore, "having passed" conveys the timing and cause of events with more precision.

Whlie one might say that something "was targeted," one cannot say that something "was targeted" something else and be grammatically correct. As only "targeted" is underlined, and not "was," it needs to be changed. Of all the answer choices, only "specifically targeting people" corrects the sentence's error without introducing new errors or extraneous words.

"As" is the most efficient, and therefore the most grammatically correct answer choice.

The improved sentence is better than the original because it cuts out unnecessary words, changing "or those who are lacking," to "or those who lack." This change also avoids having the same word next to itself, as was the case in "swimming, swimming." Although there was nothing grammatically wrong with this sentence, there was room for stylistic improvement, which was made.

The use of "making," a participle means the sentence has no verb, as a participle needs some form of "to be" to function as a full verb; therefore, a complete verb form needs to be used, and has to match the past tense usage of "tried." This makes the correct answer choice "made mistakes."

It is unclear if the “him” refers to Kennedy or Nixon. The correct answer makes it clear with whom I agree.

The only problem with the original sentence is that “John” is repeated unnecessarily. Replacing it with a pronoun the second time is a good solution. The other answer choices switch up the coordinators, but this is not a good idea. The relationship between the two parts of the sentence is cause/effect, so “because” is appropriate, not “however” or no coordinator.

In the original sentence, the pronoun “she” is ambiguous. Who does it refer to? One way to fix this would be to specify the person, another (used in the correct answer here) is to change the pronoun to “they” and refer to all three people. The choices that reverse the order of this phrase are awkwardly passive, and “just getting” is an unnecessary use of progressive tense.

The sentence has a vague pronoun reference. The use of "their" before "prescriptions" is ambiguous because we do not know if "their" refers to the doctors' or the pharmacists' prescriptions. The sentence needs to clarify to whom the pronoun refers, so the best answer choice is the one that does this, "and many pharmacists regularly complain about doctors' prescriptions."

After the preposition "between," one uses the objects pronouns "you" and "me."

The underlined portion is an incorrect usage of "me." A good rule of thumb, and the best way to find the answer, is to see which pronoun is appropriate alone, "me" or "I." "The general and I" is the correct answer.

Using "she and him" is always incorrect, as "she" is a subject and "him" is an object. The best way to fix this is to use "they" and its correct verb usage, "do not."

“Who” must be changed to “whom” because it is the object of the preposition “with.” Also, it is not desirable to end a sentence with a preposition.

The original text contains a pronoun case error. It says "my brother and I" when it should say "my brother and me." Remember to use objective pronouns—like "me," "him," and "us"—as the objects of verbs (in this case, the verb "fascinated").

Although answer choice "has fascinated my brother and me ever since we were in elementary school" correctly uses "me" instead of "I," it incorrectly uses the singular predicate "has fascinated" with the plural subject "facts."

In the phrase "...to ensure that that him and his brother Juan would be allowed...", "him and his brother" are carrying out the action implied in "would be allowed". For this reason, the subject "he" is required, not the object "him".