Chapter 12: Dangling Modifiers and Word Order

辣白菜味辣条

1. Correction of hanging modifiers:
The subject of a phrase should be clear to avoid confusion.
For example:
Error: "Walking down the street, trees grew on both sides." → Amend to "As I walked down the street, I saw trees growing on both sides."
2. Word order and information focus:
The focus of a English sentence is usually at the end, and the word order should be adjusted to emphasize the logic. For example: the original sentence: "After years of effort, Gao said soil erosion was controlled." (mis-modified with "said") → corrected to "Gao said that after years of effort, soil erosion was controlled."
Reflections：
The "topic-first" structure in Chinese conflicts with the "subject-verb first" structure in English, leading to disordered word order. For example, conditional adverbials in Chinese are often placed at the beginning (such as“为了……，我们必须……”), whereas English requires logical adjustments to sentence placement. It is necessary to analyze the context, determine the focus of information, and avoid a top-heavy or logically disjointed structure.