12 Practice Tests for the SAT answer key errors?

Question

I bought the book and was going through the tests, however, I have found a few errors on their answer keys.

An example is this from Practice Test 2, Section four # 23:

Because the tree fungus is SO GREAT a danger to local oak trees, it HAS BECOME the concern of regional botanists TO UNCOVER new ways of controlling THEIR growth.

The caps are the answer choices. The answer key says that THEIR is wrong because it refers to the oak trees, but isn't "of local oak trees" a prepositional phrase and thus the trees don't count as a subject?

Can anyone tell me if this is right and also is anyone has compiled a list of answer key errors for the test that would be great.

Answer 1

"their" is wrong because it could be referring to either the trees or the botanists. Although common sense allows someone reading it to know the preposition is for the trees, but grammatically it is unknown.

Answer 2

"and thus the trees don't count as a subject?"



I'm not sure what you are trying to say here... the trees are not supposed to be the subject, and that is part of the problem. The botanists are trying to control the fungus, not the trees. Fungus is a singular noun, and therefore the pronoun should be "it."



This is an important rule to remember in general - "they / them / their / theirs" is ONLY used for plurals. Only. Only. It's not used as gender-neutral singular pronoun, for example.



Cheech is also correct that "their" would be ambiguous in this sentence. Ambiguity is considered an error on SAT grammar.



As for your last question, I don't know who makes that book, but if you go to their website, they should have a way to see their "errata" updates. Good luck.

Answer 3

Kaplan isnt stable! i might stick to princeton. My Kaplan e book made the SAT look so annoying, and as quickly as I took the easily SAT, it grew to become into lots much less complicated than the prepare attempt questions the Kaplan e book grew to become into giving me