Byron possessed powers of observation that would have made him a great anthropologist and that makes his letters as a group the rival of the best novels of the time.
(A) makes his letters as a group the rival of
(B) makes his letters as a group one to rival
(C) makes his letters a group rivaling
(D) make his letters as a group the rival of
(E) make his letters a group which is the rival of

Hey All,

Tons of great conversation on this, and Sarai's point is well made. But let's just take one total look at it from top to bottom.

Byron possessed powers of observation that would have made him a great anthropologist and that makes his letters as a group the rival of the best novels of the time.

We should notice right away that the split "makes/make" creates a subject-verb agreement split. From there, it's about modifiers.

(A) makes his letters as a group the rival of
PROBLEM: To check subject verb, we have to notice the parallelism marker "and". "that makes" wants to match with "that would have made". The subject of both is the same, "powers of observation", which is plural. We need a plural verb, so no "s".

(B) makes his letters as a group one to rival
PROBLEM: Same as above.The modifier here is probably fine.

(C) makes his letters a group rivaling
PROBLEM: Same as above. The modifier here would probably we fine.

(D) make his letters as a group the rival of
ANSWER: Correct subject-verb agreement. Now the modifier. What we have here is "letters" modified by the prepositional phrase "as a group", which is being compared to "the best novels of the time". Are "letters" comparable with "the best novels"? Yes.

(E) make his letters a group which is the rival of
PROBLEM: Correct subject-verb agreement. Sarai's point is great, which is that you cannot use "which" without a comma. However, it's still iffy, because we end up comparing "a group" to "the best novels", which is no good.

Hope that helps!

-t
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Since the first part of the sentence uses have => the powers of observation is plural hence make should be used and not makes.

Between D and E will go with E

Subject is Powers of observation -- which is plural

A,B,C out

between D and E.

D looks better.
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we need a noun after letters..

that makes his letters XXXX

XXXX = noun..

"a group" and not "as a group" is a noun.

only C and E remain.

rival of is wrong. C is the right choice..

OA is D.
Ok guys, i have a question , if the choice E were like this
make his letters a group that is the rival of
what will you choose D or E ?

I chose A because I thought that since the sentence is "powers of observation that....."...the subject is "observation"....which is singular and so we need singular verb...

I have read somewhere that whenever a sentence has the word 'that' followed by a subject we should use that subject to find the matching verb.

line in this case.....

"powers of observation that" - "observation" is singular

Can someone please help me on this????....i'm sure i am missing something here.

There are 2 things -

1. Powers of observation ___ ('make' fits here with the plural 'powers') (A,B,C ruled out)
2. Make the letters ___ a rival group (Now 'as' cannot be used with 'make' in this context ) (for eg - We DO NOT say - The scheme can make you as a millionare , it is always - The scheme can make you a millionare .

taking into account the above the answer is (E) .

Don't mould your reasons to fit into the answers given . They are'nt official answers , mind you .