GED Language Arts (RLA) : Language Usage and Grammar
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GED Language Arts (RLA)
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Example Questions
Example Question #151 : Language Usage And Grammar
Read the passage and answer the question below
Dear Congressman Phillips,
I urge you to reconsider your closure of the shipyard. I'm a medical practitioner in the area, I meet many of the men and women employed by the facility. Many of these people are living paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford regular medical care; any gap in their employment could be devastating. If you must see it economically, consider the tremendous cost to the taxpayers when these people must rely on public programs for assistance. I ask you to please keep this shipyard open.
Very truly yours, . . .
What is another way to write this sentence?
I meet many of the men and women employed by the facility that are medical practitioners.
I'm a medical practitioner in the area, and I meet many of the men and women employed by the facility.
I'm a medical practitioner in the area and I meet many of the men and women employed by the facility.
I'm a medical practitioner in the area and meet many of the men and women employed by the facility.
I'm a medical practitioner in the area, and I meet many of the men and women employed by the facility.
Removing the comma and replacing it with a conjunction is not quite enough to separate the two clauses, because they are independent. Thus, we must use a comma and a conjunction to separate them, not just one or the other.
Example Question #1 : Other Sentence Structure
1About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. 2 All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it. 3 She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. 4 But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. 5 Miss Ward, at the end of half a dozen years, found herself obliged to be attached to the Rev. Mr. Norris, a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any private fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse. 6 Miss Ward's match, indeed, when it came to the point, was not contemptible: Sir Thomas being happily able to give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield; and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugal felicity with very little less than a thousand a year. 7 But Miss Frances married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did it very thoroughly. 8 She could hardly have made a more untoward choice.
What style of sentence dominates this passage?
Interrogative
Hypotactic
Imperative
Paratactic
Telegraphic
Hypotactic
Hypotaxis or hypotactic sentences are ones in which clauses are subordinate to other clauses (e.g. “I am late because I overslept”). This is the kind of sentence structure that gives rise to the long, winding syntax of this passage. On the other hand, parataxis or paratactic sentences are ones in which short, simple clauses are placed beside each other without subordination (e.g. “I am late; I overslept”).
Passage adapted from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814)
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