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Question

Difficulty: MediumSubject-Verb Agreement

The passage below is from an essay about early audio preservation.

Early sound recordings captured on wax cylinders in the late nineteenth century offer a fragile window into the past. The physical degradation of these delicate artifacts, which are prone to mold growth and scratches, demands advanced laser scanning technologies to recover the audio without touching the surface. Indeed, the preservation of such rare recordings represent a race against time.

Which of the following is the best revision of the bolded word "represent" in the passage?

  1. A
    NO CHANGE
  2. representsAnswer
  3. C
    represented
  4. D
    were representing

Answer

represents
The subject of the sentence is the singular noun 'preservation,' not the plural noun 'recordings' inside the intervening prepositional phrase 'of such rare recordings.' Therefore, the verb must be singular. The present-tense singular verb 'represents' correctly agrees with the subject and maintains consistency with the present-tense verbs used throughout the passage.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the subject of the verb in the final sentence.
The subject of the verb is the singular noun 'preservation.' The prepositional phrase 'of such rare recordings' is an intervening modifier and does not affect the subject's grammatical number.
A verb must agree in number with its grammatical subject, not with the noun in any intervening prepositional phrase.
2
Determine the appropriate tense of the verb based on the passage context.
The other verbs in the passage ('offer', 'are', 'demands') are in the present tense, indicating that the verb in the final sentence should also be in the present tense.
Verb tenses must remain consistent throughout a passage unless there is a logical reason to shift tenses.
3
Select the option that provides the present-tense singular form of the verb.
The verb form 'represents' is both singular and in the present tense, matching the singular subject 'preservation.'
This form resolves the subject-verb agreement error while maintaining tense consistency.

Key Concept

Subject-Verb Agreement
Estimated Time:1m 0s
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Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement

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