ACT English 3.10 Passage Drill
ACT English: Passage Drill 3, Problem 10. Which preposition best follows "consists" in this sentence?
|ACT English||Passage Drill|
|Grammar and Usage||Pronouns|
|Oral and Written Conventions||Parts of Speech|
|Product Type||ACT English|
These answer choices have a disagreement over which preposition is required.
Remember: it's a preposition's job to link nouns, pronouns, and phrases to other words
in a sentence, while establishing the relationship between the elements they link.
If a writer chooses the wrong preposition, major confusion can happen.
Option (A) serves up a good example of the messiness that the wrong preposition can cause.
When it tells us that "a mature waterspout consists for a low-pressure central vortex,"
it almost sounds like waterspouts are in love with these vortexes.
We can just imagine a waterspout telling a vortex, "I only live for you."
We have a strong feeling this isn't what the writer wants here, so we'll cut choice (A).
Choice (C) claims that these waterspouts consist "on" vortexes. This makes it sound like either
the waterspout is on top of the vortex, or maybe that waterspouts eat vortexes.
We're not sure, but that last one may be considered cannibalism.
Either way, choice (C) is wrong.
Option (D) tells us that waterspouts consist "in" vortexes, but this doesn't work. Something
can't be inside of thing it's made of.
Unless, it exists in some previously undiscovered alternate dimension where the laws of physics
We're not ruling out the existence of such a place, but we figure this is nowhere near
what the writer is trying to communicate.
This brings us to (B), the correct answer. The passage is talking about things that make
up a mature waterspout, so "consists of" is the only plausible option.
We know a waterspout is mature when it has its own job, some savings, and a firm plan for the future.