Sentence Correction

Which one is better:

1. She saw a thoroughly frightened child who was cowering in the corner of the room

2. Shw saw, covering in the corner of the room, a thoroughly frightened child.

Please explain, thank
OA: 2

Barrons Test A SC Q12

I feel the first 1 is better..
I am not able to justify why 2 is better except that 1 has the relative pronoun 'who'. Sentence 1 looks passive to me..
.. Welll, i am trying to justify since I saw the answer.. SO let me wait for others.

Official explanation is as follows:
This is a suspenseful sentence because what she saw is held off to the very last word in the sentence. ...

Personally, I do consider the first setnence is more straightforward.
For second sentence, reader may misinterpret that it was the lady who was cowering in the corner rathr than the child.

I will PM one of the experts to weigh in.. The OA u mentioned, cannot be gleaned in a single sentence.. We should see the entire paragraph to do that !!!.

thanks

Barron SC OA..I coudnt get that...

btw i hardly see such stupidity in OG Q for gmat...barron may have...

The whole OE:

This is a suspenseful sentence because what she saw is held off to the very last word in the sentence. Also, an active verb, saw, is preferable to the passive was seen.


The reason I do not include the second sentence of the OE is obvious, that portion is irrelevant.

The purpose of this posting is to find out whether sentence 2 is better than sentence 1, if so, what is the (grammatical) reasons behind it? If not, why is sentence 1 better than sentence 2?

Any guru, please comment.

If OA is B, throw Barrons away!

She saw, covering in the corner of the room, a thoroughly frightened child.

This has two interpretations

1) She saw ( as she was covering in the corner of the room) a frightened child

OR

2) She saw ( a thoroughly frightened child covering in the corner of the room)

The covering in the corner of the room is a misplaced modifier and here can modify both ( child and "she")

My 2 cents...
I think question is testing our knowledge of essential vs. non essential modifiers.
Based on my understanding "covering in the corner of the room" is non essential for the meaning of this sentence.

If OA is B, throw Barrons away!

1) She saw ( as she was covering in the corner of the room) a frightened child

OR

The covering in the corner of the room is a misplaced modifier and here can modify both ( child and "she")

I think if the sentence is

She, covering in the corner of the room, saw a thoroughly frightened child

then only sentence modifies She as mentioned in 1. I don't agree that it is a case of misplaced modifier. phrase is modifying the "She saw" i.e child.

Pls comment.