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AP English Language and Composition 4.10 Passage Drill 238 Views
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Description:
Do you know a prepositional phrase when you see one? Take a look at this AP English Language and Composition question and find out.
Transcript
- 00:00
[ musical flourish ]
- 00:03
And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by philosophers.
- 00:07
What did the philosopher say when his mom asked him to take out the trash?
- 00:11
Why?
- 00:12
[ gasp ] [ chuckle ]
Full Transcript
- 00:13
We're reading.. We're reading... We're skimming.
- 00:16
[ mumbles ]
- 00:22
Okay, here we go. In line 33, "is"
- 00:25
refers to which of the following words?
- 00:28
And here are the potential answers.
- 00:29
[ mumbles ]
- 00:34
All right, well the trick here is knowing a prepositional phrase when we see one.
- 00:38
At their most basic level,
- 00:40
prepositional phrases are made up of a preposition
- 00:43
and a noun
- 00:45
which functions as the object of the preposition.
- 00:48
All right, so for example, if we slap the preposition "of"
- 00:52
together with the noun "scorpions,"
- 00:54
we get the prepositional phrase "of scorpions."
- 00:58
Yeah we like our prepositional phrases to be a little bit dangerous.
- 01:01
All right, most of the time, prepositional phrases function like
- 01:04
adjectives or adverbs
- 01:05
usually describing things like nouns or verbs.
- 01:09
So in the sentence
- 01:10
"John fell into a pit of scorpions,"
- 01:14
"of scorpions" modifies the noun "pit."
- 01:18
And "into a pit" modifies the verb "fell." Get it?
- 01:22
Uh, okay, back to the question at hand.
- 01:25
To which noun is the verb "is" referring?
- 01:28
Well, since "is"
- 01:30
is the main verb of the sentence, it'd better be referring to the subject.
- 01:34
Right? Or else the grammar police are gonna come down hard on all of us.
- 01:38
Now that we know how to spot prepositional phrases, we can eliminate
- 01:40
most of these options really quickly.
- 01:42
Three - count 'em, three - of these choices are the object
- 01:45
of a preposition, so they can't be the subject of the sentence.
- 01:49
Bing bing bing.
- 01:51
Choice B is wrong because "belief" is the
- 01:53
object of the phrase "on belief."
- 01:56
A can go because "realisation" is the object of the phrase
- 02:00
"in an external realisation."
- 02:02
And E is eliminated because it's the object of the phrase
- 02:06
"of the good." So these choices are dropping like flies.
- 02:10
It'll be easier to find out which of these nouns is the subject of the sentence
- 02:13
if we scrape away all this prepositional phrase business.
- 02:16
It's a lot of frosting and we're looking for good cake.
- 02:18
All right, so now we're down to "insistence is a form."
- 02:22
Well, it's pretty hard to miss that "insistence" is the subject of the sentence,
- 02:26
since it's the thing that's doing somethin'. What's it doin'?
- 02:28
Being a form.
- 02:30
Sounds exhausting.
- 02:31
The noun "form" is telling us what insistence is doing,
- 02:35
making it the direct object.
- 02:37
So it looks like option C is out and D takes home the prize.
- 02:41
And before we go, we have to go back to option A.
- 02:43
We let this slide earlier, but
- 02:45
"realisation" spelled with an S?
- 02:47
Like, c'mon, England.
- 02:49
Yeah, you liked jazz.
- 02:52
[ buzz ]
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