Hardest English Test Question For College Prep

We talked just as easily as we had in the past, when we would sit in the field behind Joan’s house atop the rabbit hutch and discuss our friends and our hopes for the future.


The above sentence is supposedly one of the hardest sentences for students to correct. How would you correct it using your first instincts?


This is just for fun so no fair using google.

 

Sounds boring. Scrap it.

Do I win?

 

I'd splatter commas everywhere, then, bring in a few friends, like @Homer Potvin, to help fully, completely, Jackson Pollocking the thing, the whole, entire thing, in its entirety, entirely, with commas.

 

Yep, needs a comma bukake or a massive re-write.

Here's my shot at it, which I'm not happy with. My instinct is to get rid of "had". But a narrator is speaking, so that passive voice may be intentional. Context from the surrounding sentences is needed here. I'm leaving the passive voice in on that principle but suspect that's "wrong" and that they're wanting us to remove it and change the voice:


ETA: Psyche, @Seven Crowns ! SevenCrowns did this far better than I.

ETA: I'm wanting to try something different:

We talked as easily as when we'd sat atop the rabbit hutch in the field behind Joan’s house discussing friends and hopes for the future.


(Teenage me: "Is this allowed? This test writer sucks!!!")

 

I'd go with parenthetical commas around the rabbit hutch part, but I'd be more likely to rewrite the sentence entirely.

How much "correction" is allowed?

 

Also, which stylebook is the test question using?

 

We talked in the field behind Joan’s house. Y'know, we actually sat on top of a rabbit hutch, can you believe that? Just as we had done in the past discussing our hopes for the future and our friends, of course. Those poor rabbits didn't stand a chance. I said to Joan:

'Don't you think you're a bit big to..?'

She never listened, the fluffy ears poked from behind her dungarees and confirmed to me my worst fears when she stood up. Joan was brazen, she blamed the rabbits.

'I never wanted a rabbit. I wanted a pony. Mommy you bitch.'

'Shut up, woman,' I told her good.

While the service that next morning was very moving, in the adjacent meadow with all the animals of the parish in attendance.

 

I looked it up - the actual questions seem to be multiple choice, which makes this question significantly easier to answer.

 

*Cries fowl* (Can't believe nobody's used this bad pun yet...)

 

I'm with @Seven Crowns. That's one of the danglin'est participle I ever did see. The one comma's fine though. (Right?)

ETA: I'm one to talk though. Yesterday I dangled one that suggested the wind was blowing in a character's hat.

 

Alright it's from the ACT test for college admission. But it's no fair if you are just going to google the answer. Let the people that really want to try it have a go at it.

When do you want me to post the answer with explanation? Maybe I never should since some of these threads are around for a long while.

 

I’d split the middle and give it a five or six day deadline. While it’s true some threads last a while, threads with a definitive answer only seem to last about a week, then we get bored. Errr, I mean, threads move quickly. But it’s true. The attention span of some threads can be pretty short.

 

I think I'd want to know what the field/house was doing on top of the rabbit hutch. Maybe rearrange the misplaced modifier?

 

I posted my answer before looking it up. But do you understand why the presence of multiple choice makes it much different than when it's an open-ended question? There are an infinite number of ways to rewrite that sentence to make it more clear. There isn't one right answer, there are many.

But when it's multiple choice, obviously there's one of their potential answers that improves the sentence and three that make it worse, so the answer is very clear.

 

I want it open ended for a better discussion. I am not judging anyone as being right or wrong.

I'll post the answer (as the test givers see it) soon, seems like you're dying to tell them now.

 

If I were dying to give it, I'd probably just... give it.

As it is, I'll find somewhere else to be.

 

I would do:
We talked just as easily as we had in the past, when we would sit atop the rabbit hutch in the field behind Joan’s house and discuss our friends and our hopes for the future.
or:
We talked just as easily as we had in the past, when we would sit in the field behind Joan’s house - atop the rabbit hutch - and discuss our friends and our hopes for the future.
and then I would wonder why I was using the word 'atop'.
..and how big is that bloody rabbit hutch?

 

That's good. Left open ended as opposed to multiple choice, it's entirely dependent upon the stylebook and where the sentence will be used. Novel? Newspaper? Magazine article? Genre? Publication? Which stylebook, and who's the editor? Or does the publication have its own quirky stylebook?Each of those things would be edited differently and would depend on that publisher's editor. You'll notice my version had no commas. That's because my old newspaper editor despised commas, and compound sentences aren't good for reading columns. So we had to write in ways that got rid of them. But is it a "pretty" sentence? Nope.

A languid, folksy novel would have longer sentences and make use of commas. None of them is "right"...just different.

 

Original: We talked just as easily as we had in the past, when we would sit in the field behind Joan’s house atop the rabbit hutch and discuss our friends and our hopes for the future.

Mal: We talked just as easily as we used to in the past, when we sat atop the rabbit hutch in the field behind Joan’s house, discussing friends and future hopes.

Edited!

 

I was hoping it would open up why people make the choices they make in sentence structure. For fun though, I'm not a criticizer. When I post the answer and explanation I think it would be fun to figure out why so many 16 to 17 year olds don't pick the right answer to suit the test givers.

 

You could always hide it under one of those spoiler buttons for anyone who wants to peak. I don't know how those work though. I've just seen them in posts. @BayView, @Shenanigator, do either of you know how to do that? I don't see it in the controls. Is it html or something?

 

Good idea RZ! It's under the Icon called Insert. Hit that, then put the hidden text between the tags.

 

I did not look very hard for that, did I?

 

Nah...I had to ask someone too. A lot of us have to ask. It's like the WF initiation or something.