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Apply the Kaplan method to verbal reasoning on the GMAT.
Welcome to “Land Your Score,” a blog series in which Kaplan instructor Jennifer Land shares key insights and strategies for improving your GMAT performance on Test Day. This week, Jennifer continues her discussion of how to solve Sentence Correction problems using the Kaplan Method.
The Kaplan method for sentence correction
When we last met, we used the first step of the Kaplan Method for Sentence Correction to tackle the following sentence:
A recent spate of news reports questioning the long-term health benefits of high-fat diets have done little to convince its practitioners that they should follow more traditional weight-loss plans.
Plural or singular?
Your task at the end of my last post was to identify the subject of the verb “have.” Although the plural phrase “health benefits” appears close to the verb, the subject is actually “recent spate.” Because a spate is singular, we know the correct verb must also be singular, so “have” cannot be correct.
Now that we know we need a singular verb, we can apply steps 2 and 3 of the Kaplan Method to group the answer choices into “have” and “has.” We can then eliminate those that begin with “have,” because we need the singular form of this verb.
- have done little to convince its practitioners that they should follow more traditional weight-loss plans
- have done little to convince their practitioners to follow more traditional weight-loss plans
- has done little to convince its practitioners to follow more traditional weight loss plans
- has done little to convince practitioners of these diets to follow more traditional weight-loss plans
- has done little to convince practitioners of these diets they should follow more traditional weight-loss plans
Conciseness is key on the GMAT
Among the three remaining answer choices, identify the differences. We have two choices that say “to convince practitioners” and one that says “to convince its practitioners.” What does that pronoun “its” refer to? The antecedent is unclear, so we can discard that answer choice.
Among the two that remain, the differences are, “to convince practitioners … to follow” and “to convince practitioners … they should follow.” Because the GMAT prefers concise constructions that are idiomatically correct, “convince … to follow” is correct. (When in doubt, choose the shorter of two remaining answer choices!)
Read the corrected sentence
The corrected sentence reads as follows: “A recent spate of news reports questioning the long-term health benefits of high-fat diets has done little to convince practitioners of these diets to follow more traditional weight-loss plans.”
Next week I will show you how to tackle another type of Quantitative Reasoning problem. Stay tuned to see how to defeat the dreaded Data Sufficiency!
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The post Land Your Score: Sentence Correction Problems, Part 2 appeared first on Business School Insider.
