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Choose the option that best completes the underlined part of the sentence.

At the Battle of Agincourt, the muddy field delayed the advance of the French infantrymen, and this allowed the English longbowmen to be able to inflict significant damage on them, and the English infantry eventually eliminated their reduced numbers easily Because the muddy field delayed the advance of the French infantrymen at the Battle of Agincourt, the English longbowmen could inflict significant damage on them, and, their numbers reduced, the English infantry easily had been able to eliminate them The muddy field delayed the advance of the French infantrymen at the Battle of Agincourt, allowing the English longbowmen to inflict significant damage on them, and because the number of the French infantrymen was reduced, the English infantry easily could eliminate those remaining few The French infantrymen at the Battle of Agincourt tried to advance but had been delayed by the muddy field, which allowed the English longbowmen to inflict significant damage on them, and the English infantry eventually would eliminate their reduced numbers with ease The French infantrymen at the Battle of Agincourt were delayed in their advance by the muddy field, it allowed the English longbowmen to inflict significant damage on them, their numbers were reduced, and the English infantry easily could eliminate those left

Title

The Battle of Agincourt

Your Result

Correct

Difficulty

Hard

Your Pace

0:06

Others' Pace

2:00

Video Explanation

Text Explanation

A question about the victory of Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt.

Choice (A): this has a pronoun mistake. A pronoun can refer only to a noun, not to the action of a clause. In this choice, the pronoun “this” refers to the action of the previous clause. This choice is incorrect.

Choice (B): the events seem in chronological order, but strangely, the final and last event has a verb in the past perfect, “had been,” suggesting illogically that the last event was before all the others. This is a tense mistake, and this choice is incorrect.

Choice (C): this choice has the structure [independent clause][subordinate clause] “and” [subordinate clause][independent clause]. Everything here is correct.

Choice (D): First of all, the tenses in the first clause are strange: “tried to advance but had been delayed.” The delaying was at the same time or after the attempt to advance, so the past perfect tense is illogical. Also, the pronoun “which,” like the pronoun in (A), attempts to refer to the action of the previous clause. This choice is incorrect.

Choice (E): The pronoun “it,” like the pronouns in (A) & (D), attempts to refer to the action of the previous clause. Also, notice that this entire sentence is what I would call “laundry list parallelism”— fact #1, fact #2, fact #3, and fact #4. The problem with this design is that we lose all information about the logical interconnection of these facts. We use a combination of independent & subordinate clauses to indicate the logical interrelationship of ideas, and all that information is lost in laundry list parallelism. This choice is incorrect.

The only possible answer is (C).

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