GRAMMAR: -ing or -ed form? Present or Past Participle?

**raghuveer_v** · 05-31-2002, 05:18 AM

Hi Erin,

5. The architecture exhibited in the Empire State Building and conveyed us an idea of the prevailing attitudes of the day is important for the historical and cultural value it represents.

conveyed ==> conveying

The perennial problem: Do I use -ing or -ed? Here we need the -ing form because architecture is the subject of the verbal conveying.

I (Erin Billy) wrote this problem this way because I noticed that many of my students were missing real TOEFL questions (just like this one) because they were simply matching the Ed form in conveyed with the Ed form in exhibited and assuming it was correct that way.

Nope! Not a good strategy--you'll miss the harder questions if you do that!!

prevailing
is
it represents

Sorry Erin, But I couldn't make any sense out of the scentence even after the correction.

Can you please explain ...

Raghuveer.

**raghuveer_v** · 05-31-2002, 05:22 AM

And ...

6. In 2001 George W. Bush, Jr., entered his first year office
as President of the United States.

In 2001
entered
office ==> of office

Gotta have this preposition!

as President

I agree with the answer.

But, I am still a little bit confused about the useage of "The"

I thought it should be .... " as the President of the Unites States."

S.O.S !!

Raghuveer.

**phuongled** · 06-08-2002, 01:51 PM

I think the U.S. has only 1 President so we can say either 'the President' or throw it away.E.g.(The) director of this company has just retired.

**Erin** · 06-12-2002, 06:14 AM

Sorry Erin, But I couldn't make any sense out of the scentence even after the correction.

Can you please explain ...

Raghuveer.

It's a bit tricky to answer these questions sometimes, but the main idea behind whether to choose the -ing form or the -ed form this:

The -ing form is used for DOING the action, which means SUBJECT, which means ACTIVE voice.

The -ed form is used for RECEIVING the action, which means OBJECT, which means PASSIVE voice.

Before I go further, let me offer two examples that will make things clearer as we go along:

<ul>[*]speaking person (the -ing form)[*]spoken words (the -ed form)[/list]
In this type of question, we always have two elements:

<ul>[*]a particple, which is either in the -ing or -ed form[*]a noun that is modified by this participle[/list]
So, using the previous examples, speaking modifies person and spoken modifies words.

The next step is to realize that these participles all come from verbs--speaking and spoken both come from the verb speak.

Now, using these examples, and applying them to the rules I mentioned at the beginning, we will notice that if we made a sentence, person would be the subject of the verb speak and words would be the object of the verb speak. Using this procedure, we can figure out whether should use the -ing or -ed form of a participle that modifies a noun. And that's it!!

Of course, this is easy when the vocab is easy, and we often get confused when we are using difficult vocab because we sometimes don't know whether something is the subject or the object of the verb, but this procedure that I have explained is the only sure way to get the right answer.

**Erin** · 06-12-2002, 06:30 AM

And ...

6. In 2001 George W. Bush, Jr., entered his first year office
as President of the United States.

In 2001
entered
office ==> of office

Gotta have this preposition!

as President

I agree with the answer.

But, I am still a little bit confused about the useage of "The"

I thought it should be .... " as the President of the Unites States."

S.O.S !!

Raghuveer.

Another favorite TOEFL trick--we can omit the determiner with many titles/professions.

For example, it is perfectly acceptable to say:

<ul>[*]Poet Maya Angelou is best known...[*]She is chair of the foundation.[/list]

Make sense now?

Erin

**raghuveer_v** · 06-12-2002, 10:58 AM

Hi Erin,

It's a bit tricky to answer these questions sometimes, but the main idea behind whether to choose the -ing form or the -ed form this:

The -ing form is used for DOING the action, which means SUBJECT, which means ACTIVE voice.

The -ed form is used for RECEIVING the action, which means OBJECT, which means PASSIVE voice.

Before I go further, let me offer two examples that will make things clearer as we go along:

speaking person (the -ing form)
spoken words (the -ed form)

In this type of question, we always have two elements:

a particple, which is either in the -ing or -ed form
a noun that is modified by this participle

So, using the previous examples, speaking modifies person and spoken modifies words.

The next step is to realize that these participles all come from verbs--speaking and spoken both come from the verb speak.

Now, using these examples, and applying them to the rules I mentioned at the beginning, we will notice that if we made a sentence, person would be the subject of the verb speak and words would be the object of the verb speak. Using this procedure, we can figure out whether should use the -ing or -ed form of a participle that modifies a noun. And that's it!!

Of course, this is easy when the vocab is easy, and we often get confused when we are using difficult vocab because we sometimes don't know whether something is the subject or the object of the verb, but this procedure that I have explained is the only sure way to get the right answer.

Erin

Yeah, I understood the underlying concept, and the approach you suggested to tackle such problems.

But what is still fuzzy to me, is the meaning of this particular scentence...

"The architecture exhibited in the Empire State Building and conveying us an idea of the prevailing attitudes of the day is important for the historical and cultural value it represents."

Let me make things simple for myself by reducing the scentence to it's components. If I am right,...

The scentences says ...

Something1 and Something2 is important for Something3.

Is it?

If so, can you please explain the Something2 thing?
who is connveying the idea to us?

And, is the "it" in Something3 referring to Something1?

By the way, after reducing the scentence to this form, I got another doubt ...

Isn't it that the scentence should read ...

Something1 and Something2 are important for Something3.

Please waste some more of your time to enlighten our dumb minds

<table style="background-color:silver;color:Black;font-face:arial;font-size:10px;border-left:1px solid white;border-top:1px solid white;border-bottom:1px solid black;border-right:1px solid black;"><tr><td> Raghuveer

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Edited by - raghuveer_v on 2002 Jun 12 06:20:27

**madhavi** · 06-19-2002, 12:09 PM

hi raghuveer I had the same doubt

"The architecture exhibited in the Empire State Building and conveying us an idea of the prevailing attitudes of the day is important for the historical and cultural value it represents."

Let me make things simple for myself by reducing the scentence to it's components. If I am right,...

The scentences says ...

Something1 and Something2 is important for Something3.

Is it?

If so, can you please explain the Something2 thing?
who is connveying the idea to us?

And, is the "it" in Something3 referring to Something1?

By the way, after reducing the scentence to this form, I got another doubt ...

Isn't it that the scentence should read ...

Something1 and Something2 are important for Something3.

I feel the sentence good if we replace 'and' with a comma.
In that case it indicates that something1 and something2 are the same
which is important for something3

The architecture exhibited in the empire state building ,conveying us an idea of the prevailing attitudes of the day,is important for the historical and cultural value it presents Erin please answer if it is good this way.

madhavi

**Erin** · 06-19-2002, 06:41 PM

But what is still fuzzy to me, is the meaning of this particular scentence...

BTW, I've noticed your idiosyncratic spelling of sentence for many dozens of posts... At first I thought it was a typo (a "goof"), but now I'm starting to wonder whether it's a mistake.

"The architecture exhibited in the Empire State Building and conveying us an idea of the prevailing attitudes of the day is important for the historical and cultural value it represents."

Let me make things simple for myself by reducing the scentence to it's components. If I am right,...

The scentences says ...

Something1 and Something2 is important for Something3.

Is it?

No.

The main subject of the sentence is architecture.

The trick here is that "exhibited" and "conveying" both modify "architecture." Both of these words can be seen as reduced adjective clauses:

The architecture that is exhibited in the Empire State Building and that conveys us an idea of the prevailing attitudes of the day is important for the historical and cultural value it represents.

Please waste some more of your time to enlighten our dumb minds

Nobody is dumb here. We are all just sharing our knowledge!!

[img]http://www.gifart.com/images/smilie.gif" width="60px">

<table style="background-color:silver;color:Black;font-face:arial;font-size:10px;border-left:1px solid white;border-top:1px solid white;border-bottom:1px solid black;border-right:1px solid black;"><tr><td> Raghuveer

</td></tr></table>

Nice rollover Raghuveer!

I hope this helps, but please let me know if not!! And don't be afraid to "bump" the topic if need be!!

Erin

**raghuveer_v** · 06-20-2002, 03:23 AM

Atlast, I now understand the meaning of the sentence. Thanks.
And thanks for correcting my 20-year old mistake.

The meaning is okay, but again, a little doubt ...

"... architecture that is exhibited in the Empire State Building ..."
suggests passive voice.

where as ...

"...and that conveys us an idea of the prevailing attitudes of the day ..."
suggests active voice.

Can these be combined so?

Raghuveer

**Erin** · 06-20-2002, 03:49 AM

Yes! It's perfectly fine to join active and passive voice with a conjunction; in other words, it is correct parallel structure to use these together.

A lot of people think otherwise; that's why I wrote this question this way. In my mind, I think of this as "parallel structure doesn't "go that deep."" I've used this explanation with some of my students, but I didn't see that "flash" of understanding that crosses somebody's face when they've understood, so I don't generally use this explanation.

So, have we exhausted all the TOEFL aspects of this question yet??

BTW, I've been thinking for a bit about "conveying us." I think I'm going to change this to "conveying to us" in my book.

Erin