Select the option that will improve the underlined part of the given sentence. In case no improvement is needed, select 'No improvement required'.
He was so confident then nothing could hinder his success.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
The correct answer is option 3 i.e. so confident that.
Error concept: The sentence uses “so...then” which is grammatically incorrect when expressing a cause-and-effect relationship.
What is wrong:The construction “so...then” is not a standard correlative pair in English for expressing result or consequence.
Grammatical concept: The correct correlative pair is “so...that” to express result.
Structure: so + adjective/adverb + that + result clause.
Incorrectness of the concept in context: “He was so confident then nothing could hinder his success” is incorrect because “then” does not serve as a result conjunction.
How to correct: Replace “then” with “that” to form the correct construction “so confident that”.
Correct phrase/ correction: so confident that
Final sentence:He was so confident that nothing could hinder his success.
Hence, the chosen option is correct.