John,

I would call the error in the Earhart sentence a dangling modifier despite the fact that the modifier itself isn't underlined. (We could argue over whether this is dangling or misplaced, but that's not really relevant.)  I'm not sure if Warriner uses that terminology--my copy is packed in a box right now.

The modifier doesn't need to be underlined because the problem with a dangling modifier isn't inherent in the modifier itself but in its relationship to the subject of its clause. It follows that you can fix a dangling or misplaced modifier by rewriting the clause it modifies just as easily as by rewriting or moving the modifier. (Also note that the directions for sentence-revision questions are different from the ones I quoted before.)

I'm not sure I follow your logic on the "protested over" example. When we say that the error is confined to the underlined portion, that doesn't imply that everything that is underlined must be changed. The fix is indeed confined to the underlined portion. As for the question type, I wouldn't call it wordiness. This question is one of usage--to be precise, the selection of an idiomatically appropriate complement (direct object vs. prepositional phrase). If you want to argue that usage isn't grammar, I'll concede that I phrased things loosely in my previous email. Normally I distinguish grammar from usage. Let's say that it's a clearly defined and recurrent category of error. It's also true that this category of question is difficult to prepare students for, other than showing them that it exists and giving them varied examples, as usage principles are specific to individual lexical items. There isn't a single rule to be taught here, the way we can for subject-verb agreement.

Now it is true that I have seen error-identification questions that target a sub-species of wordiness, but these are confined to tautological expressions rather than simply saying something with more words than necessary. For example, there have been questions on sentences like the following (I'm making up the sentences, but the tautologies are one's I've observed on test questions):

- Although Payton's arguments are debatable, but I give him credit for reframing the debate in a productive manner.
- The company's annual charitable contributions exceeded one hundred thousand dollars a year.

In my experience (and I've studied the SAT closely for many years), the test doesn't just throw out any old random question on topics culled from usage books. Real questions are written following strict test specifications and harp on a relatively small number of points.

BTW, I did not mean to disrespect your students by calling their understanding simplistic. I have often seen teachers' attempts to give students the easy answer (which as you so rightly point out they want) backfire when students try to apply that reductive explanation to difficult (and sometimes even not-so-difficult) cases. The search for the easy answer is certainly tempting, but after many years in the classroom, I've come to a few conclusions:

First, the way traditional grammar is taught, when it is taught at all, results in predictable misunderstandings. For example, there's often a tendency to look at grammar as a property inherent to isolated words (which is what appeared to me to be a problem with your students).

Second, most high school students can handle some complexity if we show them why it matters. That doesn't mean giving them a graduate course in syntax, but it does mean showing them, for example, why the definition of a noun as a "person, place, thing, or idea" is hopeless. Or to take another example, I've taught high school students that English has a two-tense verb system for a long time. I've often had them tell me I was blowing their minds, because I was contradicting what all their previous teachers have told them, but I've never had them forget it.

Finally, it's worth it for teachers to meditate carefully on the terminology they use and how they explain things even when they don't give students the full story, because precision under the surface can quietly guide students away from potential misunderstandings. For example, some years ago, I abandoned the terms "independent clause" and "dependent clause" and substituted "main clause" and subordinate clause" because I found the other terms led to too much confusion.
 
Karl

On Dec 20, 2011, at 3:04 PM, John Chorazy wrote:

> Karl, Craig, and all - thank you for your responses.
>  
> The SAT does include questions that pertain to usage issues that cannot be pinned down to a survey of high school grammar instruction. That's a separate issue, I suppose. Karl - in many cases with sentence corrections, the subject seems somehow out of place and not, as you notice, a modifier (or a single word in the case of my original model). Here's another:
>  
> Although criticized by a few for her daredevil aviation escapades, most people viewed Amelia Earhart as a skillful pilot.
> (a) most people viewed Amelia Earhart as a skillful pilot
> (b) most people viewed Amelia Earhart to be a skillful pilot
> (c) a skillful pilot was what most people viewed Amelia Earhart as
> (d) Amelia Earhart was viewed by most people as a skillful pilot
> (e) Amelia Earhart, a skillful pilot in the view of most people
>  
> Can we name the exact and explicit grammatical principle? It's not a misplaced modifier, since according to the question the subject and predicate is the underlined issue. What would you call that, in a certain, specific term? What would Warriner's call this?
>  
> As far as an error being confined to the underlined choice, a question such as the one below defies that suggestion:
>  
> Given her strong sense of social justice, Burns vehemently protested over her party's failure to support a tax decrease.
>  
> Only a part of the underlined phrase "protested over" needs correction - the elimination of "over". What's the explicit grammatical principal? Is wordiness grammatical, or stylistic?
>  
> Craig - your students need those terms from you because teachers at the High School level believe Hillocks et al since their college professors in Methods courses tout Hillocks et al. And then they come to department meetings and share articles from NCTE that tout Hillocks et al. Many students come to me, a teacher of 11th graders, not knowing that an adverb modifies a verb, and not knowing what it means to modify at all, frankly. That they are being exposed to these discussion is huge for them - yes, I do let them read your collective responses. And if they and their understandings are overly simplistic, as Karl suggests, it's because school teaches them 1+1=2 and the SAT gets you into college and the world teaches them that if you can sing well, run fast, look pretty, or the like then you can probably make a whole lot of money. You might be surprised, but 17 year old humans like to see things very clearly, especially if their teachers tell them so: Tiger Woods cheated on his wife and deserved what he got; War is bad and so was Bush; the "Nucleus" is that large oval body near the center of the cell, and other facts. They like formulas because they're constant and because you can use them on the test. When they take the SAT at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning, they're thinking one thing - how can I do this and pass with a score good enough to get me into my first choice college? It's not a conversation, it's a performance.
>  
> Grammatical ambiguity on the SAT would be a lovely thing to assess, if teachers actually talked about it and also assessed student understanding of grammatical ambiguity in specific cases. I posed my initial question to the list because I found it interesting and because my students - young, impressionable, and actually willing to talk about things that others have labeled over their heads - wanted to know more. I believe they made a fair argument from their knowledge base, though I told them (as suggested in my first message) how they sentence was technically "correct." I'm not in the business of either critiquing or defending the SAT - my role is to get them ready for Craig.
>  
> I thank you again for your help and for these wonderful conversations.
>  
> John
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> 
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Hancock, Craig G <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Karl,
>      Your response is very clear and useful.
>      My experience has been that most progressive teachers believe that grammar is largely an intuitive system that most students will acquire while the attention is on other things. I teach a new group of college freshmen every year,and most will say that their teachers wanted them to learn "literary elements," but not anything substantial about grammar. I usually give my incoming students a list of terms that include "phrase," "clause," "subordinate clause," "sentence fragment." "run-on sentence," and so on, and it is very rare to get even one thoughtful answer in a class. For "fragment" and 'run-on," they have very soft answers like "a run-on sentence runs on too long." For "clause," and "phrase," they have no clue. I don't know if that holds true outside of New York, but it has been true of my students for many years.
>    The SAT's, as currently constituted, don't challenge that assumption. If they asked for knowledge about language directly, then teachers would have a direct incentive to teach it. Since we don't test for it, teachers can continue to assume that intuitive knowledge is sufficient.
>    Meanwhile, we can continue to make the argument, as you do well, that knowledge about language will help students do better on the test. The test makers make our argument harder by not requiring it.
> 
> Craig
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [
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> 

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