[Grammar] Select the underlined word or phrase that is incorrect..

[Majy Mathew]

They went camping in the woods with their friends, who is great at fishing.


a) their friends
b)great at fishing
c)the woods
d) they went

 

[Tdol]

Are you sure that you have got the sentence right?

 

[Raymott]

It's supposed to be incorrect. There's only one segment that's wrong, and there's only one answer that could be the wrong bit.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I don't see any of the answers as being incorrect.

 

[emsr2d2]

I'm with Raymott. Only one of the four choices given could be underlined as the incorrect part of the sentence.

 

[Tdol]

It's supposed to be incorrect. There's only one segment that's wrong, and there's only one answer that could be the wrong bit.

I know, but it doesn't strike me as a good example of this type of question.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I still don't see the incorrect answer.

 

[emsr2d2]

Really? Hard to do this without giving the answer away to the OP but ... Sing/pl (pre-comma) + vb (post-comma).

 

[MikeNewYork]

I consider the verb to be wrong, but that is not one of the choices.

 

[emsr2d2]

But if the verb is right, then something in the first half could be underlined as incorrect. Once changed, it would go with the verb and make a correct sentence.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Either view is equally valid. I have seen many of these questions that have structural problems.

 

[MikeNewYork]

That is the one you chose. I wanted to point out another option.

 

[emsr2d2]

But the question directs us to choose one of a, b, c and d. Had your option been labelled e), it would have been an impossible question because there would have been two correct answers. I agree with you that if the verb were changed to fit the plural in the first half, it would still result in a grammatical sentence but that was not one of the 4 options.

A better question would have been "You can change only one of these four options. Changing which one would result in a grammatical sentence, and to what would you change it?"

 

[MikeNewYork]

I agree.

 

[emsr2d2]

As has previously been said in this thread, it's not a great question to illustrate the point but there is still only one possible answer.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Or one could say there is no possible answer.

 

[Barb_D]

Or one could say there is no possible answer.

??
Of course there is.
Change the noun to match the verb. That is one of the possible answers.

I too had expected to find the verb as the choice, but it wasn't, so it's the noun that's the problem.

 

[emsr2d2]

Had the question simply been "What is wrong with the following sentence? They camped in the woods with their friends, who is great at fishing", I imagine 99% of us would have said "Simple. It should be "are" instead of "is"!" However, a canny teacher might go on to ask the students if there was a different way of correcting the sentence. After a while, most of us would probably spot that changing "friends" to "friend" would do the job equally well.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Both solutions work.

 

[emsr2d2]

That was never in question but post #1 listed only one of those solutions as an option so it had to be the right answer for that exercise.