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ShankSouljaBoi
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The principal revealed that students' standardized test scores increas 22 Aug 2020, 23:18
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Short compilation on reported speeches triggers (ex : announced revealed said concluded.... blah blah list is exhaustive) ....
Let's be the principal X
Let's be in that moment.
Right
So i am revealing or saying something in my present that i expected (past) Y to be lower and that i expect (at present) the grades will improve next semester (future) as well.

Now apply this....
X past - past perfect
X present - past
X future - would

B makes sense :)
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test9032
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The principal revealed that students' standardized test scores increas 12 Oct 2022, 09:50
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kivalo
The principal revealed that students' standardized test scores increased even more this year than she had expected it to and their grades will improve next semester as well.


A. had expected it to and their grades will improve

B. had expected and that their grades would improve

C. expected it would and that they will improve their grades

D. expected them to and their grades would improve

E. expected and that they will have improved their grades
Show more

I'm no expert but here are my 2 cents.

After reading the original sentence, these are 3 Things stood out to me -
1) had expected
2) it
3) will improve

1) had expected -
Seems okay since we want to sequence the 2 actions in the past.

i) Principal revealed
ii) Principal expected

To signify that the action of "expecting" happened before the action of "revealing", we use Past Perfect Tense.

2) it -

There seems to be no logical referent for "it". So there is clearly a pronoun error.

Logically, the sentence wants to refer to the standardized scores so we need to look for a plural pronoun or a structure that eliminates "it"

Pretty good reasons to eliminate Option (A) and (C).

3) will improve -

Whenever we talk about the future from the point of view of the past, we use "would" + verb.

So use of "will" is incorrect.

Another solid reason to eliminate Option (A) and also eliminate Option (E)


I took a while to choose between Option (B) and (D).

But then closely reading Option (D), literally it says "...increased more this year than she expected (students) to". To what? To score as high as they did? To come to school on time? It isn't clear.

A solid reason to eliminate Option (D).

Another small point for Option (B) over (D) was the placement of "that". Usually whenever "that" is used as a connector in parallel clauses it is preferred (NOT A RULE) to repeat "that".

So we can safely mark Option (B).

Also, a lot of people on the forum are saying -

i) "them" cannot refer to students : This actually isn't true. If we have a logical referent for a pronoun then then there is no pronoun ambiguity. But if we have 2 logical referents for the pronoun then there is pronoun ambiguity.

eg: While Homelander and Soldier Boy were fighting, Butcher lasered him.

Pronoun Ambiguity - "him" can refer to either "Homelander" or "Soldier Boy"
Not Pronoun Ambiguity - "him" can refer to either "Butcher" or "Homelander" or "Soldier Boy". It cannot refer to "Butcher" since it does not make logical sense to say that "Butcher" lasered himself (Maybe the future seasons of Boys prove me wrong)

ii) "them" cannot be used since there is no noun form of students. This rule has sadly been eliminated due to an OG problem in which the pronoun did actually refer to a noun that was not present in the sentence. (Some example about a poet and her husband, if you remember it reply to me with the link please)

Thanks for reading!
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