GMAT Club Experimental SC 2-2

I will go with D

A, B are out.
It is ambiguous who provide much of water ..etc?? NGOs or Sudan.

C -- out.
NGOs were expelled from Sudan <by Sudan Goverment>
Sudan Govt expelled NGOS from Sudan.

D, E remains.

D make sense logically..
NGO's provided water.. etc.. before.. they expelled.
So "had provided" --> CORRECT.

A in my opinion.

A clearly states that the NGOs provided much of the help to the refugees. "Expelled from Sudan" is a non essential modifier, set off my comma.

B is not wrong but wordy.

C is grammatically not correct.

D - no need to use past perfect.

E - sounds like only those who helped the refugees have been expelled. Rest are allowed to stay. D also has this problem.

My answer is E

It's between B and E but I think that there needs to be one more kink that separates the two answer choices cause neither sentence is grammatically incorrect. It has more to do with the intended meaning and that would depend on the tone/intent of the person. GMAT questions test grammar and logic but never tone or intent.

2/5 .

E.

In A, although grammatically correct, the sentence does not make sense. Did "expelling" and "providing" happen at the same time?! "had provided" would be better.

btw, both A and B have the same meaning.

Again, very good question.

Legend, I believe the hardest GMAT questions increasing test the intended meaning. Sometimes, grammatically correct, the most clear and concise choice makes little sense.

Thank you for your feedback. Again the goal here is to give the writer as much feedback for improvement as possible to write these questions closest to the GMAT.
Here are the OA and Explanation - would be fantastic if you could post your feel for the difficulty of this question - let's just put on a level between 600 and 800 - that will of course vary by each test-taker but still:

Below 600
600-650
650-700
700-750
750+

OA: E:

The sentence requires a restrictive clause, which is in E – the best answer.

A and B - are wrong as they both are non-restricted clauses.
C - lacks clarity about who were expelled. It also lacks “the”, the definite article, to make sure the items distributed to the 270m refuges.
D - Past perfect tense in D is not required to express a single event in the past. A simple past tense is sufficient.
E - is in simple past and a restrictive clause clearly express that “Much of the food, water and medicine to the 2.75m refugees who live in temporary camps in Darfur were provided by “The NGOs” that were expelled from Sudan”.

bb,

I just googled this sentence as it is and it is coming from some one's blog. I just don't find it appealing if sentence correction Q's are made out of Joe Schmoe's blog.

I understand that GC wants to develop good verbal Q's but do you have any rules on where the sentences can come from and where they cannot come from? For example the previous questions (1-*) came from Wiki and a single article may be written/modified by many people.

I agree with the need for that because we are talking about NGO's that were expelled.

I clearly see two events here in the past. expelled and provided and they did not happen at the same time.

The act of providing supplies happened until the explusion.

What I find even more amusing is that the OE says there is only one event??

The OE for E uses a passive voice and provides it as a justification?? I don't get it

Edit: After reading another similar Q from the same writer, this one also makes more sense.

Can the test writer confirm whether overlap of two events in the past does not require Past Perfect?

IIRC, Past Perfect should be used when two events happened in the past. Does this explicitly mean that one event started, it completed and then the second event happened after the first event and there is no overlap of events ( happening together ) what so ever?? Can some one shed more light on this?

In this Q, the final act of provision and the expulsion seem to overlap.

After reading botivroy's and your explanation, I too agree that a "past perfect" must be used here. I also don't think that "restrictive clause" is needed here. Issue of "past perfect" aside, E tells me that only those NGOs that provided food, water and medicine were expelled. Rest were allowed to stay.

Good question to test the 'restrictive clause' application. But from the discussion i see that the usage of 'Past perfect' may also make this one grammatically correct. But the usage of past perfect may destroy author's intended meaning.

My initial answer was A. Then after reading the explanations I will go with E. So this question is beyond my range and i was a 680. I rate this one 700+ difficulty.

"that' is necessary. Not all NGOs expelled from Sudan. Also, we not need past perfect. Choice E is my final choice.

+1 E
not D because no requirement to show the sequence of two events mentioned
A & B are non-essential modifiers whereas the sentence demands one
c incorrect grammer..