![]() ![]() thing conflict? Are the two words being compared not equivalent in some other way? Decide whether the two things are equivalent. ![]() What two things is the sentence, as written, comparing? Circle the nouns in the text. Determine what the comparison is between.Generally speaking, if there is an illogical comparison, one of the mismatched nouns will be underlined. If you see a comparison that you think might be faulty there are three steps you need to take: #Compare anything fullInstead, as I mentioned above, you’ll need to keep an eye out for words that signal a comparison (like/unlike, as, than) and full names of individuals. Unlike most of the grammatical issues that show up in Identifying Sentence Errors (ISE) questions, illogical comparisons are hard to spot by just checking underlined words. Practice looking for these clues on every SAT writing question until it becomes second nature. These names usually belong to artists or writers, and the sentence will set up a faulty equivalence between the individual and her work. Full names-this is a slightly weird point, but if a question includes the full name of a person it often involves an illogical comparison.Comparison key words-the words "like," "unlike," "as," and especially "than" almost always indicate a comparison and thus the chance for an illogical one.Luckily, illogical comparisons generally appear in very similar ways, so there are just a couple of clues that you need to watch out for because they will often signal a comparison issue: Illogical comparisons questions appear relatively frequently on the SAT writing: you are likely to see one or two of them, especially since they can appear in both Identifying Sentence Errors and Improving Sentences questions. #Compare anything how toHow to Approach Illogical Comparisons on the SAT (Image credits: far left, Daniel Ogren left, Gage Skidmore) You can compare authors to authors and books to books but not books to authors. You can't compare something with a group that includes that thing without specifying that you're talking about everything else in the group. This rule may sound strange, but it doesn't make sense to compare one person with everyone-you would compare them with everyone else. The second rule is that you can't compare something of specific type to all things of that type. ![]() So to return to our first example, it's correct to compare Bob's restaurant and Jimmy's restaurant because they're both things or to compare Bob and Jimmy because they're both people but you can't compare Jimmy's restaurant and Bob or Bob's restaurant and Jimmy. The first key rule is that you must compare people to people and things to things. There are two main types of illogical comparison errors that appear on the SAT writing: comparisons between people and things and comparisons between Though they look the same on most maps, the size of Alaska is actually twice that of Texas. ("Those" takes the place of "the novels.") Depending on the sentence's construction, it may also be correct to substitute "that" or "those" for the second noun (as long as it's the same as the first one): It's still clear that we're comparing Jimmy and Bob's restaurants, but in a way that's not as redundant sounding. Jimmy’s restaurant has more customers than Bob's does. To streamline it, we can drop the second "restaurant": This sentence, though correct, sounds pretty repetitive. Jimmy’s restaurant has more customers than Bob's restaurant does. In order to correct it, we have to alter the wording so that the two things being compared are the same type of thing: Jimmy’s restaurant has more customers than Bob does.Įven though it might seem fine, this sentence is comparing "Jimmy's restaurant" with "Bob," which makes no sense. Though essentially simple to spot, illogical comparisons are unfamiliar for most students because they rarely come up elsewhere.Īn illogical comparison occurs when a sentence compares two things that aren't of the same type: This kind of construction is called an illogical comparison, and it's one of the most unusual concepts on SAT Writing. Grammatically speaking, however, you absolutely can compare apples and oranges-they're both fruits! However, it's true that some comparisons are nonsensical, like a comparison between apples and eating apples. Oftentimes, if I make an outlandish comparison, someone will turn to me and say, "You can't compare apples and oranges, Alex." ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |