The sentence is
“Tom was the first ever student from Jacksonville University to qualify for the prestigious math competition, while only being in his sophomore year”
What i what to emphasise is that Tom managed to qualify for the competition while still being only in his sophomore year. As in, he was really young but still managed to qualify – this means he possessed an advanced skillset.
However, the given sentence can also be interpreted as Tom was the only person to qualify for the competition from the Sophomore year – e.i there are more people from other years who qualified.
I’m not sure how I can correctly put the point forward, would really appreciate some help!
Answer
You can put “while only being in his sophomore year,” in the beginning of the sentence as an introductory dependent clause so that it becomes much clearer that you want to emphasize that Tom still managed to qualify despite being a sophomore.
While only being in his sophomore year, Tom was the first ever student from Jacksonville University to qualify for the prestigious math competition.
You can also do the following:
Tom, despite being only a sophomore, was the first ever student from Jacksonville University to qualify for the prestigious math competition.
The trick here, for me, is to put the modifying clause as close to the subject/object as possible to avoid any confusion on which word or words are actually being referred to.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : gabbar0x , Answer Author : Chris Al E
