Notice, though, that looking at the answer choices revealed the problem that you might not have otherwise
been able to see or hear. Then, POE took you the rest of the way.
POE DOES THE BIG WORK
Once you have a sense of what the question is testing, POE can get you closer and closer to the answer.
POE is especially helpful when you’re dealing with sentences that have lots of issues, like this one:
It may seem that how people speak is distinct from how 5 they are acting; however, there’s
something that most historians will tell you is wrong.5.
A) NO CHANGE
B) they act, however, there’s something
C) they are acting, however, that’s something
D) they act; however, that’s somethingHere’s How to Crack It
First, as always, check what’s changing in the answer choices. In this case, there are three things
changing: the difference between act and are acting, the difference between that’s and there’s, and the
difference between a period and a semicolon. While this may seem like a lot, this is actually a huge POE
opportunity! Start with the one you find easiest, and work backwards from there.
Because the semicolon is not commonly used, let’s save the punctuation part for last. Hopefully we can
get the right answer without having to deal with the punctuation at all. Let’s start with the difference
between that’s and there’s. The sentence doesn’t contain any mention of place, so the sentence can’t
contain there’s, eliminating (A) and (B). Then, to choose between the last two, they act is more concise
and more consistent with the rest of the sentence than is they are acting, which makes (D) better than (C).
In this instance, we got to the correct answer without having to deal with all the messiness in the question!
ALL OF THE QUESTIONS CAN’T BE WRONG ALL OF THE
TIME
Now that our strategy is basically set, let’s look at a more difficult question.
6 Your knowledge of grammar and vocabulary may be shaky, but you can learn a lot from