Bunuel wrote:
A new telecommunication device gives the user the freedom to choose not only the radius of the distance of the signal, but also which of two differently priced methods of transmission are used to send the signal.
A. gives the user the freedom to choose not only the radius of the distance of the signal, but also which of two differently priced methods of transmission are used to send
B. is giving the user the freedom to choose not only the radius of the distance of the signal, but also which of two differently priced methods of transmission are used for sending
C. gives the user the freedom to choose not only the radius of the distance of the signal, but also which of two differently priced methods of transmission is used to send
D. is giving the user the freedom to not only choose the radius of the distance of the signal, but also which of two differently priced methods of transmission is used to send
E. gives the user the freedom to choose not only the radius of the distance of the signal, but also to determine which one of two differently priced methods of transmission is used for sending
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:
Of the several decision points available to you on this problem, two should stand out as absolute, binary choices:
-Parallel structure in a not only...but also construction
-Subject-verb agreement
Remember: arguably your greatest weapon on Sentence Correction is that you control the order in which you make decisions, so you do not necessarily have to deal with the first decision ("gives" vs. "is giving" ) first. If you are unsure of the absolute nature of any decision ("is giving" is strange because it's a temporary action, as though right now at this ver moment a user is being given these choices...but is it 100% wrong/illogical?), you always have the power to search for a decision you prefer.
The "not only...but also" distinction is a great one because wrong answers are easy to eliminate. If you ignore everything from "not only" through "but also," what's left needs to make complete sense as its own sentence, and here two answers do not pass that test:
(A) ...gives the user the freedom to chose which of two methods (this works)
(B) ...is giving the user the freedom to choose which of two methods (this also works)
(C) gives the user the freedom to choose which of two methods (this also works)
(D) is giving the user the freedom to which of two methods (this doesn't make sense)
(E) gives the user the freedom to choose to determine (this doesn't make sense)
So now you're down to (A), (B), and (C), and here you may see a subject-verb agreement decision toward the end of each choice between "is used" and "are used." What is the subject? Note here that "two differently priced methods" is part of a modifier:
A new device gives he user the freedom to choose...which of two differently priced methods...
So "which" is the singular subject (and if you think logically, too, the user chooses one of the two, so only one method is actually used to send the signal). This means that you need the singular "is," and only answer choice (C) properly uses both the proper singular verb and proper "not only...but also" parallelism, so (C) is correct.