I have to admit that as I get older I find myself more and more puzzled by some of these SAT questions.  Specifically in the Daniel Libeskind sentence, I don’t see an idiom.  I do find “capable to convey” awkward and would prefer “capable of conveying,” but there is enough variability in the use of infinitive vs. prep+gerund constructions that I wouldn’t call it a clear error.  However, I’m not sure that would satisfy the SAT designers.  But I frequently find judgments that something is in error in a sentence puzzling because they fail to take into consideration the considerable range of variation that is characteristic even of formal writing.



Herb



From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jane Saral

Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 4:47 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: SAT question



Thank you to those who were able to explain that we do not follow personal pronouns with modifiers (except rarely or Biblically).   I am not persuaded that the who clause is a noun clause.  It is different from "I don't know who did not approve of it," where the whole clause functions as the object of the verb. And different from

"She was liked by whoever saw her"  and

"She was liked by whomever she saw."

It is true that the SAT does not test the who/whom distinction.  The ACT does, however.



The question was given a 1 (the lowest) level of difficulty, so I believe that one is intended to go with one's ear, since that arcane principle is not taught in high schools.  The interesting angle there is that SAT questions generally require a taught principle for all questions except the idioms, where a good ear is necessary.  Example of an idiom question from the same test:

 Daniel Liebskind believes that his goal as an architect is to create structures that are capable to convey a sense of

                                                A       B                            C                                           D

 freedom and movement.   No error

                                           E

So I think the original question is an anomalous SAT question.

Should have known that my question would engender rants against standardized tests.  But I will say that in my 36 years of teaching high school students (and 11 years of grading AP English exams), I saw a very high correlation between performance on these multiple choice tests and student writing.  I could almost always predict how students would score. Students who understood and recognized sentences that were clear, parallel, balanced, etc. generally wrote them themselves and were able to progress to the next levels with ease.  It is not that we cared only about error-correcting or that we stopped there in our teaching of writing.

Jane Saral















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