WRITING AND LANGUAGE DRILL 4: ANSWERS AND
EXPLANATIONS
1. B The question asks for the choice that points out the potential confusion in how to understand the
role of genre. Choice (A) implies that a paradox might exist but does not point it out; eliminate
(A). Choices (C) and (D) do not discuss genre and are therefore unrelated, so eliminate (C) and
(D). Choice (B) is the correct answer.
2. B Here you need to find the answer choice that is consistent with the graph. The graph shows how
the numbers of vampire and zombie films have increased since 1950. Choices (C) and (D) are
not consistent with this information; eliminate them. Zombie films have increased dramatically,
from about 10 in 1960 to about 55 in 2000, while vampire movies went from about 15 to about
- Because vampire movies did not increase nearly six-fold, eliminate (A). Choice (B) is the
correct answer.
3. B The question asks you to identify the correct transition between the paragraph about trends
involving Western, zombie, and vampire movies and the current paragraph. Choice (A) does not
address either paragraph, so eliminate (A). Choice (C) mentions zombie movies, but not in
relation to the trends, so eliminate (C). Choice (D) mentions zombies but not in relation to
movies; get rid of (D). Choice (B) mentions the trends and introduces a discussion, and is
therefore the correct answer.
4. A The question asks about deleting the phrase in different eras. The topic of the paragraph is why
different genres dominated in different time periods, so the phrase is necessary to keep this
sentence consistent with the paragraph. Eliminate (C) and (D). The phrase is important to the
meaning of the sentence. Choice (A) is correct.
5. C Here you’re looking for the statement that supports the idea of American crusade. Choice (A)
contains an unrelated reference to the Catholic Church; eliminate (A). Choice (B) relates the
information to today, which is not the time period in question, so eliminate (B). Choice (D)
contains unrelated information about the stock market crash that happened years later, so
eliminate (D). Choice (C) mentions the postwar crusade mentioned in the previous sentence
and is the correct answer.
6. D You’re looking for an alternate form of punctuation that would not be acceptable. Since the
original underlined portion contains a period, the ideas before and after the punctuation must be
complete. Therefore, replacing a period with a comma-conjunction pair or with a semicolon
would be acceptable. Eliminate (A) and (C). Choice (B) makes use of the colon, which can be
used between two complete ideas. Choice (B) is acceptable, so eliminate (B). Choice (D) uses
a comma without one of the FANBOYS in place of stop punctuation, so this is incorrect. Choice
(D) is the correct answer.
7. C The question asks for the most effective way to combine the sentences. Because (A) repeats the
phrase never change, eliminate (A), as it is not concise. Choice (B) includes the phrase
because of it, but the use of the ambiguous pronoun it nullifies this choice as well. Choice (D)
