hey everyone this is stacy from eg map welcome to our channel thanks for stopping by to solve
this question on spinning figure skater with me we're going to go ahead and be using that egmet
three-step approach to work through this sentence our first step is going to be that meaning
analysis we're going to go ahead and utilize the sentence structure to extract the meaning
and figure out what our author is intending to communicate here so as i begin reading i see
that during an ice age so i know right away i have my time period set i know that this is happening
sometime during an ice age so i keep reading to find out what is happening during the ice age
the buildup of ice at the poles and the drop in water level near the equator speed up the
earth's rotation so i have two things that are working together in a way to speed up the
earth's rotation so i kind of have this process happening so one is the buildup of ice and to the
drop in water levels so these two things together speed up the earth's rotation so that is making
logical sense here so i keep reading like a spinning figure skater so i'm going to make that
right here that i have a comparison happening like a spinning figure skater whose speed increases so
whose speed is describing that spinning figure skater whose speed increases when her arms are
drawn in so i get this increase of speed happens when the figure skater's arms are drawn in okay
so let's pull these key aspects the first thing i know is that during the ice age
the build-up of ice and drop in water levels speed up the spin of the earth so this is aspect one
that we got from this first portion of the sentence right up here the second part the
process is compared to a spinning figure skater so this was aspect two that they gave us and
aspect three a spinning figure skater increases speed by drawing in her arms so this is that third
piece now anytime i have a comparison i always like to pause and ask is my comparison logical
and just to go back to some basic fundamentals it's pretty elementary but i think it's important
for us to do this logic check we know we always need to be comparing apples to apples
when we have a comparison just to make sure we get that logically correct meaning so is
that what we have going on here now in aspect one we know we have this process
or the way that the earth's rotation is sped up right that was that buildup of ice
and that drop in water levels now that is aspect one that is being compared to
aspect two which is the spinning figure skater so this is a noun entity
so we have a process or the way that the earth's rotation is being sped up
being compared to a noun or the spinning figure skater
this is not apples to apples so our comparison is not logical we cannot
have two separate entities being compared so we either need to have a process or a way to away
or a noun to a noun so this is going to lead us right into that error analysis
and we have to not only ask because this comparison logically correct but we also have to
ask and is it grammatically correct now as we were just discussing that meaning analysis we have a
problem with aspect two here because we can't have this process that or this way that the earth's
rotation is sped up that's described in aspect one being compared to the noun entity of that spinning
figure skater in aspect two so let's take a closer look at the stated comparison here we have a and b
are sped up like y so here a would be the buildup of ice and b would be the drop in water levels
speed up x which is that earth's rotation like which is the way we get that comparison being
communicated grammatically like y which is our spinning figure skater and that's not going to be
logically correct or grammatically correct because we know we use like to compare noun entities but
we hear we have a process or the way the earth's rotation is spun up so that's more of an action
and we're using like to compare an action to a noun so we know we can't do that so if we look at
the logical comparison we need we would need a and b being that buildup of ice and that drop in water
levels speed up x which is that earth's rotation as so we would need as because we need to compare
the way these two things are done a spinning figure skater increases her speed so as why
increases we'll say z here that's the formula we're going to need for our comparison to make
this logically and grammatically correct so let's move on over into those answer choices we know we
can reject choice a right away because of that meaning and error analysis that we just worked
our way through so let's get to work on choice b here now choice b like the increased speed of
a figure skater when her arms are drawn in now this is repeating the error of option a
the noun spinning figure skater has been increased with increased speed we see speed here
but that's still a noun entity so does that fix the communicated comparison nope it does not in
addition to repeating that original error option b is completely completely removing the word
spinning from the sentence it's not used anywhere in this choice now this word removal leaves us
with the slight meaning change because the essence of the spinning figures is inherently needed here
in order for the comparison to be communicated properly so we're going to go ahead and reject
choice b and we're going to move on to choice c now choice c here again we have the issue of the
comparison with the logic the two things not being logically compared we have like a figure skater so
again we have that noun entity and like certainly cannot compare the two processes so this choice is
out for sure so we're going to reject choice c and move right on to choice d now choice d
has us headed in the right direction we might see the use of as and be looking for that buzzword to
compare the two processes or the way so if you jumped on this scene as in the grammarian and
you said that that is it as compares actions i want you to hold on and ask yourself where
is the action do we actually have an action associated with spinning figure skater here
and you're not going to see one because in the absence of the verb the use of as to present the
comparison is considered incorrect here now you may say that increases here is our verb
but we have who's sitting here so this is who increases is actually working as the subject
verb pair there's no verb associated with spinning figure skater so d is not getting the job done and
we're going to go ahead and have to eliminate d and hope choice e has our correct answer
for us and it absolutely does just as a spinning figure skater increases so here we have that verb
skater increases speed by drawing in her arms so we have logically what we need the way
the earth's rotation is sped up compared to the way a figure skater increases speed
by drawing her arms in so we have a process to process or the way in which something is done to
the way in which the figure skater increases speed so choice e gets the job done for us gives us that
logically correct and with the use of as grammatically correct comparison just a few quick
takeaways for you always take the time especially with comparison sentences to ask does this make
sense spending more time up front will make your job easier as you move through those answer
choices comparisons must be both logically and grammatically correct so make sure that you check
for both of those things and do not gravitate to a choice with a structural change because you see
the grammatical buzzword you've been looking for we saw in choice d here how as was sitting
there and it was very tempting but it didn't give us that logical comparison that we needed
so we have to check that meaning as well thank you so much for solving this question with me
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