Lab Report Peer Edit: Agreement, Pronoun Case, and Sentence Boundaries
A seventh-grade science class is peer-editing lab reports before a unit assessment. The teacher projects four sentences from one report and asks pairs to mark errors without rewriting the writer's meaning. Sentence 1: 'The mixture of vinegar and baking soda, along with three drops of food coloring, were placed in the beaker.' Sentence 2: 'Between you and I, the results seemed inconsistent.' Sentence 3: 'The thermometer read 22 degrees Celsius, however the solution did not freeze.' Sentence 4: 'Neither the students nor the teacher were ready when the timer buzzed.' One editor says Sentence 2 is correct because 'between' sounds formal and 'I' sounds more educated than 'me.' Another editor wants to fix Sentence 3 by replacing the comma with a semicolon but is unsure whether 'however' then needs another comma. The teacher's constraint: every correction must be explained by naming the grammatical relationship, not by saying 'it sounds right.' The pairs have 15 minutes and must decide whether Sentence 4 needs a change rather than assume every sentence contains an error.
1. Correct Sentence 1 and Sentence 4. For each, name the subject and explain why the verb form changes or stays.
Read the worked answer
In Sentence 1, the subject is 'mixture,' which is singular. 'Of vinegar and baking soda' is a prepositional phrase, and 'along with three drops of food coloring' is a parenthetical phrase, not part of a compound subject. The verb should be 'was': 'The mixture ... was placed in the beaker.' If the sentence said 'Vinegar and baking soda were placed,' the subject would be compound and plural. In Sentence 4, 'neither ... nor' connects two subjects, and the verb agrees with the nearer one. 'Teacher' is singular, so the verb should be 'was': 'Neither the students nor the teacher was ready.' If the order were reversed, the verb would agree with 'students': 'Neither the teacher nor the students were ready.' Both corrections depend on identifying the actual subject, not on the words nearest the verb.
2. Evaluate the editor's claim about Sentence 2 and give the corrected sentence with an explanation.
Read the worked answer
The editor's claim is wrong. 'Between' is a preposition, and prepositions take object pronouns: me, him, her, us, them. 'I' is a nominative pronoun used for subjects, as in 'You and I reviewed the results.' After 'between,' the correct form is 'me': 'Between you and me, the results seemed inconsistent.' The editor is hypercorrecting because 'you and I' is correct in subject position, so 'I' sounds more formal. But formality does not change grammatical case. A useful test is to remove the other pronoun: 'Between me, the results seemed inconsistent' sounds odd because 'between' still needs an object, but 'between I' is clearly impossible. The corrected sentence keeps the writer's meaning and follows the case required by the preposition.
3. Fix Sentence 3 in two different ways and explain the punctuation rule.
Read the worked answer
Sentence 3 is a comma splice: two independent clauses are joined only by a comma, and 'however' is a conjunctive adverb, not a coordinating conjunction. One fix is: 'The thermometer read 22 degrees Celsius; however, the solution did not freeze.' The semicolon separates the independent clauses, and the comma after 'however' sets off the parenthetical adverb. A second fix is: 'The thermometer read 22 degrees Celsius. However, the solution did not freeze.' The period creates two sentences, and 'However' begins the second with a comma after it. A third option is: 'The thermometer read 22 degrees Celsius, but the solution did not freeze,' because 'but' is a coordinating conjunction. The semicolon alone is not enough if 'however' is not followed by a comma, since the adverb would otherwise run into the clause.