e-GMAT's Best Practices for SC - Practice 1

You have touched my weakest spot with this Question

But I can't claim the credit to answer it correctly as I have seen it numerous times.

The principal difficulty faced in these type of question is getting the components of the main list and sub list

For example, the below sentence has 3 events.
1) turned the tide of English victories in her country
2) liberating the city of Orleans
3) persuaded Charles VII of France to claim his throne

Thankfully this Q has only last one underlined. But can't expect Q to lucky each time. right...

Anyway, 2) is dependent on 1). Hence 2) is modifier.
1) and 3) seem to independent, hence should be made parallel. (Toughest step to decipher in other Qs, at least for me)

Once we know the above the other things will become easy.

Q for reference
-------------------------
Joan of Arc, a young Frenchwoman who claimed to be divinely inspired, turned the tide of English victories in her country by liberating the city of Orleans and she persuaded Charles VII of France to claim his throne.
(A) she persuaded Charles VII of France to claim his throne
(B) persuaded Charles VII of France in claiming his throne
(C) persuading that the throne be claimed by Charles VII of France
(D) persuaded Charles VII of France to claim his throne
(E) persuading that Charles VII of France should claim the throne


Meaning
----------------
Joan of Arc, (Main Subject)
a young Frenchwoman who claimed to be divinely inspired, (modifier ignore)

(1) turned the tide of English victories in her country

(2)by liberating the city of Orleans

and
(3) she persuaded Charles VII of France to claim his throne.

Error Analysis
---------------------
Since, (1) should be parallel to (3)
Errors:
a) she not reqd
b) should start with persuaded

POE
---------
between B & D, B seems to change the meaning (it seems to suggest that persuasion is not done to claim the throne, rather for claiming it)

Hence D seems to be the best one out of the lot.

Really awesome article. I do rush sometimes and miss the point, especially when doing a test. I vote for the video format. This is so much easier than reading.

@soumens, I must congratulate you on your thought process. As I read your explanation here, I felt that the structured process for approaching SC is now engrained in your mind. (Pardon my comment if you always approached SC in this manner). The way you have explained this question tells THE MOST IMPORTANT thing about SC - once you understand the meaning of the sentence, figuring out the correct answer becomes easy. This is exactly what you did here - you understood the meaning and logical linkages among various elements - in this case a list. And then you figured out the errors and selected the answer.

Now imagine what would have happened, if someone under the pressure of time did not pay attention to the complete sentence. He would have not have found anything wrong with the original choice and hence finding the right answer would have become a difficult task.

So continue applying your holistic approach to SC - always start with the meaning of the COMPLETE SENTENCE!



If you wish, you may post a question or two in which you found such identification tricky.

Regards,

Payal

Thanks for your appreciation @nitin2582. Please do not rush. Follow a structured approach to solving SC questions. I would suggest you try your hand on the questions in this thread and solve them using a step by step process.

Regards
- Payal

Dear e-GMAT Administrators,

I have certain comments on the highlighted text. The Audio-Visual format in indeed the best for presenting the article, however i think it may not be useful for everyone. The format requires the user to have a PC in his/her studyroom with fast internet connection and the headset while the traditional format requires only internet connected PC (not necessarily in study room).

When e-GMAT looks at its Indian customer base, it might be familiar with the fact that every GMAT aspirant (and infact many) in india does not have the luxury to have all these facilities at his study place. He/she, at present, might be downloading your articles from office computers, cyber cafes, college computers etc., taking printouts of those and reviewing later while studying at home or at his study place - I used to do this few months back but how have installed all these things at home and so can enjoy your great articles in any format. Such a huge group would directly be excluded from the beneficiary list of your valuable and informative articles.

So in my opinion audio/visual format is though the best for everyone may not suitable for everyone. I would rather suggest you to present the articles in both formats.
I would like to congratulate e-GMAT team for creating the great articles. I have gone thru many of them and found extremely informative.

Thanks and Regards,

Abhijit

Dear Narenn,

Thank you for chiming in. First of all, this is not the end of text based articles. We will continue to write those. However, with this article, our goal was/is to combine the convenience of an audio visual article with that of the portability of text. One feedback that we received was that content delivered visually is 4-5X more effective than that delivered textually. Here are a few features of this article:

1. This article is created in HTML5 format - a format that plays really well on phones, tablets, and PCs.
2. This article uses object based construction. In layman terms, it is HD, yet can be can be streamed on a 128 kbps connection. By comparison, the bit rate of 720 P HD videos is ~2Mbps. This means, you can easily view this view this video on a smartphone.

I do understand that a good number of folks may not have a computer, however a good # of people who are preparing for GMAT will probably get a tablet/smartphone. I understand that Android tablets cost ~$150 in India.

Once again, this is not the end of the text based era, just the beginning of a new one, hopefully one in which customers come out as eventual beneficiaries.

Regards,

Rajat Sadana

Dear Rajat,

This will really be a wise decision - joining hands with new technology/trends while maintaining current process - and will benefit everyone.

Regards,

Abhijit.

Payal,

Thanks a lot for your kind words. It is great to get appreciation, especially from own instructor. Now I can even boast among my friends "See I told you guys I am doing it the right way. Even Payal agrees."
But don't congratulate me yet. Still have to undergo the acid test of GMAT and this Q was known one.

U kidding me?? I was pathetic in SC before joining e-gmat.

Oh and BTW as for the thought process, I just try to imitate what you or Shraddha do in the live sessions in your slides.
First, read the complete sentence and try to get the meaning.
Second, divide the sentence in known components (Subject, Verb, Modifier etc.) as you do by coloring or underlining in your slides. Gett rid of the fluff.
Third, look inside the modifiers for long sentences. Try to make sense out of sentence.
Fourth, list as many errors as possible.
Lastly, Focus on underlined part and POE.

Agreed, the perils of ignoring non underlined can indeed be grave.

Consider following example which I encountered today:

Market research has shown that the newest model of N-Phone gained widespread popularity not due to technical superiority but through seamless and intuitive design.
A) gained widespread popularity not due to technical superiority but through seamless
B) gained widespread popularity not only due to technical superiority but also through seamless

Will skip other options as I could eliminate it.

Pressed for time, I spotted not only X but also Y idiom and marked B with a triumphant feeling that I could see behind the traps which GMAC has set for me. Tricky Parallelism, of course. right. My expression changed soon though.

Explanation of B read "Choice B is not the correct answer. This changes the meaning of the sentence."

Of course it changed the meaning of whole sentence. It would have been instantly felt if I had read the whole sentence.

Lesson learnt: It's better to be slow than be wrong.

Really awesome presentation.. 5 stars!! The audio visual stuff makes this so simple. There are many times when we make mistskes. I hope this will help me improve. Do you ahve other such content

Payal-Pretty easy one from your bakery... OA : D

Please give us some challenging 700+ questions...

Great PPT and Questions. The interactive format is really helpful.

Hello,

I just tried the attached interactive video and it does not work.

Looking forward to checking it out.

Thanks

Me too!
The video does not work for me either

Just checked. It works for me. Try to reload couple of times. Or maybe you are missing video player?

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