Be Careful Of Appositives

Appositives can cause confusion in structure questions on the TOEFL test because an appositive can be mistaken for the subject of a sentence. An appositive is a noun that comes before or after another noun and has the same meaning.

Sally, the best student in the class, got an A on the exam.

In this example Sally is the subject of the sentence and the best student in the class can easily be recognized as an appositive phrase because of the noun student and because of the commas. The sentence says that Sally and the best student in the class are the same person. Note that if you leave out the appositive phrase, the sentence still makes sense (Sally got an A on the exam).

The following example shows how an appositive can be confused with the subject of a sentence in structure questions on the TOEFL test.

Example 1 from the Paper and Computer TOEFL® Tests

____ George, is attending the lecture. (A) Right now (B) Happily (C) Вecause of the time (D) My friend

In this example you should recognize from the commas that Georgeis not the subject of the sentence. George is an appositive. Because this sentence still needs a subject, the best answer is (D), my friend. Answers (A), (B), and (C) are incorrect because they are not subjects.

The next example shows that an appositive does not always come after the subject; an appositive can also come at the beginning of the sentence.

Example 2 from the Paper and Computer TOEFL® Tests

____ Sarah rarely misses her basketball shots. (A) An excellent basketball player (B) An excellent basketball player is (C) Sarah is an excellènt basketball player (D) Her excellent basketball play

In this example you can tell that Sarah is the subject and misses is the verb because there is no comma separating them. In the space you should put an appositive for Sarah, and Sarah is an excellent basketball player, so answer (A) is the best answer. Answers (B) and (C) are not correct because they each contain the verb is, and an appositive does not need a verb. Answer (D) contains a noun, play, that could possibly be an appositive, but play is not the same as Sarah, so this answer is not correct.

The following chart outlines the key information that you should remember about appositives:

APPOSITIVES

An appositive is a noun that comes before or after another noun and is generally set off from the noun with commas. If a word is an appositive, it is not the subject. The following appositive structures are both possible in English:

S, APP, V

Tom, a really good mechanic, is fixing the car.

APP, S V

A really good mechanic, Tom is fixing the car.