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Word placement- Question# 72 1000SC

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Word placement- Question# 72 1000SC

by meh_ » Sun Jun 10, 2007 6:56 am
This is an example taken from one of the practice Manhattan test. I belive it sounds really "weird" but I guess it is correct according to the book. Anyments?





Though it had about 11 inches of snow, aviation officials said conditions on the runway at the time of the emergency landing was acceptable.



A) aviation officials said conditions on the runway at the time of the emergency landing was acceptable

B) the runway conditions during the emergency landing were acceptable according to aviation officials

C) according to aviation officials, the runway was in acceptable condition during the time of the emergency landing

D) the runway was said by aviation officials to be in acceptable condition during the emergency landing

E) aviation officials said that conditions on the runway at the time of the emergency landing were acceptable



D) is the right answer even though is a passive tense._________________Isis Alaska


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Re: Word placement- Question# 72 1000SC

by arunjithp » Sun Jun 10, 2007 11:18 pm
meh_ wrote:This is an example taken from one of the practice Manhattan test. I belive it sounds really "weird" but I guess it is correct according to the book. Anyments?





Though it had about 11 inches of snow, aviation officials said conditions on the runway at the time of the emergency landing was acceptable.



A) aviation officials said conditions on the runway at the time of the emergency landing was acceptable

B) the runway conditions during the emergency landing were acceptable according to aviation officials

C) according to aviation officials, the runway was in acceptable condition during the time of the emergency landing

D) the runway was said by aviation officials to be in acceptable condition during the emergency landing

E) aviation officials said that conditions on the runway at the time of the emergency landing were acceptable



D) is the right answer even though is a passive tense._________________Isis Alaska


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by discreet » Mon Jun 11, 2007 12:06 am
Yes,in B,The phrase "according to aviation officials" is awkwardly placed at the end.

While reading the sentence,it was obvious for me that the choice that has the runway conditions at the beginning of the second clause would be correct(as "it"in the first clause is modifying runway conditions).Two options had this.
I was about to chose B but I noticed that the Phrase that is modifying the runway conditions is placed at the end and appears to create an awkward construction.So,D is correct.

Note that Passive choice doesn't necessarily mean that it's incorrect.
Given two "Grammatically correct" sentences in active and passive voice,the former is preferred(as passive tends to create a wordy sentence).Here,B is not grammatically correct,so the choice D is correct.
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by BTGmoderatorRO » Sat Sep 30, 2017 1:02 am
Option A would have been correct if the said sentence by the aviation was in quote,a quotation should be use expressed the said sentence in this form "aviation officers says conditions on the runway at the time of emergence landing was acceptable" INCORRECT!!!!

Option B.
The runway condition during the emergence landing were acceptable according to the aviation officials.
this option suffers the same fate as the option above ,that is, it does not carry a quotation also the use of tense is wrong "were" is grammatically wrong to be used.The subject is singular "runway" also the verb to be used should be singular. INCORRECT!!!!

Option C.
according to aviation officials, the runway was in acceptable condition during the time of the emergence landing.
'according to' is an an awkward statement to introduce the subject of the sentence

Option D.
the runway was said by aviation officials to be in acceptable conditions during the emergence landing.
This option is in a passive statement, it clearly depicts the the correct use of grammer and the phrase modifies the verb in a correct manner.

Option E.
aviation officials said that conditions on the runway at the time of emergency landing were acceptable .
This option is guilty of the past tense verb
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by ErikaPrepScholar » Thu Oct 05, 2017 4:36 am
Hey guys,

There's a pretty quick way to get to the answer here. We see that this sentence starts with a modifier (a chunk of the sentence that describes another chunk of the sentence, often set off by a comma):

"Though it had about 11 inches of snow"

When we have a modifier in a sentence, it needs to modify the thing closest to it. Here, our modifier talks about "it" having about 11 inches of snow. So what has 11 inches of snow?
A says that "aviation officials" had 11 inches of snow. That doesn't work. Eliminate.
B says that "runway conditions" had 11 inches of snow. That's almost right, but the "conditions" don't have 11 inches of snow - the "conditions" are that the "runway" itself has 11 inches of snow. Eliminate.
C throws in another modifier ("according to aviation officials"), but then it says that "the runway" had 11 inches of snow. This makes sense! Hold onto it.
D also says that "the runway" had 11 inches of snow. Hold onto it.
E again says that "aviation officials" had 11 inches of snow. Eliminate.

So we are between C and D. At this point, we can rely on concision and redundancy issues. In C, "during the time of the" takes way longer to say than "during the". Similarly, C throws in an extra comma, which convolutes the structure of the sentence a bit. D is shorter and clearer than C, so we pick D.

So while D uses passive voice, it isn't wrong! Passive voice is used less than active voice and isn't preferred in most writing, but it isn't an error, especially compared to something like a misplaced modifier. Look out for the [modifier], [sentence] structure on the test - we can often knock out 2-4 answers immediately by knowing what the modifier should refer to.
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