Cracking The SAT Premium

correct sentences. Still, precision is key when you’re dealing with pronouns. See what you can do with
these sentences. Circle the potentially imprecise pronouns and rewrite the sentences. Answers can be
found on this page.

i. Certain  dialects    have    obvious sources,    but that    doesn’t make    it  any easier  to  understand.

ii. Each    of  us  speaks  with    an  accent  because of  where   they    are from.

iii. Word   choice  and pronunciation   it’s    usually easy    to  hear    in  someone’s   accent.

iv. Everyone    uses    some    kind    of  dialect words   in  their   everyday    speech.

v. Movies,  TV, the internet:   it  may be  destroying  differentiated  dialects    in  the modern  world.

Precision can show up in some other ways as well. Have a look at this question.

The Appalachian region’s     8 isolation    has led to  some    hypotheses  from    major   urban   centers

that    its dialect has remained    intact  from    the days    of  its earliest    settlers.

8.

A) NO CHANGE

B) isolation    has led to  some    hypotheses  that    its dialect from    major   urban   centers has

remained    intact

C) isolation    from    major   urban   centers has led to  some    hypotheses  that    its dialect has

remained    intact

D) isolation    has led to  some    hypotheses  that    its dialect has remained    intact  from    major

urban   centers

Here’s How to Crack It

Check what’s changing in the answer choices. This step is crucial here because there are no obvious
grammatical errors, so the answer choices are essential to figuring out exactly what the question is asking
you to do.

In the end, the only difference among the answer choices is that the phrase from major urban centers is in
different places. In the end, we will just need to put that phrase in the most precise place, hopefully right
next to whatever it is modifying.

In this case, we can choose from among hypotheses, dialect, isolation, and intact. Which of these would
have the most precise need for the phrase from major urban centers? Because urban centers seems to
have something to do with place, we should eliminate (A), hypotheses, and (D), intact, which don’t have
anything to do with place. Then, because the passage as a whole has talked about the remoteness of the
Appalachian dialect, we can say for sure that it is not a dialect from major urban centers, eliminating
(B). All that remains, then, is (C), which completes the phrase isolation from major urban centers, which
is the most precise answer.