This one is a classic, with a nice mix of mechanical and meaning issues. And it's even featured in this week's Topic of the Week:
our long-winded Beginner's Guide to GMAT SC. Good times.
Quote:
(A) Some buildings that were destroyed and heavily damaged in the earthquake last year were
It makes no sense to say "destroyed and heavily damaged" -- it should be an "or", not an "and." And I'm also not crazy about the verb tenses, but we'll say more about that in a moment. Eliminate (A).
Quote:
(B) Some buildings that were destroyed or heavily damaged in the earthquake last year had been
Hm, the "had been" makes a whole lot of sense here. Whenever you see "had + verb" (past perfect tense, if you like jargon), you'll want to look for some other action that happened later in the past -- generally, a later action that's in simple past tense. In this case "buildings... had been constructed in violation of the city's building code" certainly happened before the buildings "were destroyed or heavily damaged" in the earthquake.
That's a textbook, perfect use of past perfect. Keep (B).
Quote:
(C) Some buildings that were destroyed and heavily damaged in the earthquake last year have been
The "and" problem is the same as in (A), and the verb tenses make no sense: it sounds like the buildings were built
after they were destroyed in the earthquake, and that clearly isn't the point of the sentence. Eliminate (C).
Quote:
(D) Last year the earthquake destroyed or heavily damaged some buildings that have been
This has the same verb tense error as in (C). So (D) is gone, too.
Quote:
(E) Last year some of the buildings that were destroyed or heavily damaged in the earthquake had been
Hm, this looks an awful lot like (B). Verb tenses are fine.
So basically, we've eliminated (A), (C), and (D) based on somewhat mechanical errors, and now we're down to two choices. We discussed this situation -- and this exact example -- in detail in our
SC Guide for Beginners this week. Let's compare these last two choices again, side by side:
(B) Some buildings that were destroyed or heavily damaged in the earthquake last year had been
(E) Last year some of the buildings that were destroyed or heavily damaged in the earthquake had been
The only real difference is the placement of the phrase “last year.” In (B), “last year” is right next to “earthquake,” and it seems to be telling us that the earthquake occurred last year. That seems reasonable.
But (E) subtly expresses the wrong idea. “Last year” is right at the beginning of the sentence, suggesting that the entire first clause is the thing that happened last year: “some of the buildings… [modifier blah blah]… had been constructed in violation of the city’s building code.” But that doesn’t make sense: the buildings weren’t constructed last year.
So we can eliminate (E), and (B) is our winner.
I am having some difficulties with verb tenses. Can you guide how to approach such questions? I have read the conceptual part and got an idea about which tenses are used when , but still get the SC questions wrong based on tenses.