A recent poll indicates that many people in the United States hold a

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of the crucial part of this sentence is that many people in the United States denounce the big government, in that they say the government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time they support many specific government programs for health care, education, and the environment.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Modifiers + Grammatical Construction + Tenses + Parallelism

• Semicolons and the “comma + conjunction” construction are used to link two independent clauses; commas are used to link an independent clause with a dependent one; comma cannot be used to join two independent clauses.
• Dashes are used in place of colons: to introduce a list, a definition/explanation, or an answer/solution.
• Any elements linked by a conjunction ("but" in this sentence) must be parallel.
• All elements in a list must be parallel.
• Habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense.
• The simple present continuous tense is used to refer to actions that are currently ongoing and continuous in nature.

A: Correct This answer choice correctly acts upon the independent subject pronoun "they" with the active verb "denounce" to form a complete thought, leading to a complete thought. Further, Option A uses the phrase "saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful"; the construction of this phrase conveys that intended meaning - that many people in the United States denounce the big government, in that they say the government is doing too much and has become too powerful. Moreover, Option A currently uses the simple present tense verb "denounce" to refer to habitual action. Further, Option A correctly uses commas to link the independent clause "they denounce the big government" to the dependent clauses "saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful" and "while at the same time supporting...the environment. Additionally, Option A avoids the parallelism errors seen in Options B and C, as it lists no elements together and maintains parallelism between "saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful" and "supporting...the environment".

B: This answer choice incorrectly uses dashes to join the independent clause "they denounce big government" to the independent clause "they say that government is doing too much and has become too powerful" and the dependent clause "but supporting at the same time...the environment"; remember, semicolons and the “comma + conjunction” construction are used to link two independent clauses; commas are used to link an independent clause with a dependent one; comma cannot be used to join two independent clauses, and dashes are used in place of colons: to introduce a list, a definition/explanation, or an answer/solution. Further, Option B fails to maintain parallelism between "denounce the big government" and "supporting at the same time...the environment"; remember, any elements linked by a conjunction ("but" in this sentence) must be parallel.

C: Trap. This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful"; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies that many people in the United States denounce the big government, and as a separate action they say the government is doing too much and has become too powerful; the intended meaning is that many people in the United States denounce the big government, in that they say the government is doing too much and has become too powerful. Further, Option C fails to maintain parallelism among "they denounce big government", "say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful", and "they support...the environment"; remember, all elements in a list must be parallel.

D: This answer choice fails to form a complete sentence; "while they denounce big government", "saying that government...become too powerful", and "at the same time...the environment" are all dependent clauses, so there is no independent subject for these clauses to modify.

E: This answer choice incorrectly uses dashes to join the independent clause "they say that government is doing too much and has become too powerful" to the dependent clauses "while they are denouncing big government" and "supporting at the same time...the environment"; remember, semicolons and the “comma + conjunction” construction are used to link two independent clauses; commas are used to link an independent clause with a dependent one; comma cannot be used to join two independent clauses. Further, Option E incorrectly uses the simple present continuous tense verb "are denouncing" to refer to a habitual action; remember, habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense, and the simple present continuous tense is used to refer to actions that are currently ongoing and continuous in nature.

Hence, A is the best answer choice.

Additional Note: Please note that in Option A "saying government..." and "at the same time supporting..." are not joined by the conjunction "while"; rather both are subordinate actions to "denounce the big government"; "while" is actually used to convey a sense of concurrence between "denounce" and "supporting".

To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):



To understand the concept of "Simple Continuous Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



To understand the use of punctuations on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~10 minutes):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hi fozzy,

This is in response to your PM. Although many people have arrived at the correct answer, let me describe it in a little more detail as to how to eliminate the incorrect answer choices and why the correct one is indeed correct.

A recent poll indicates that many people in the United States hold a combination of conservative and liberal political views; i.e., they denounce big government, saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time supporting many specific government programs for health care, education, and the environment.

MEANING ANALYSIS:

According a recent poll, many people in the US have combination of conservative and liberal political views. They denounce big government for two reasons:
a. government is doing too much
b. government has become too powerful
But at the same time, they support many government health care, education, and environment programs.

ERROR ANALYSIS:

If we carefully study the structure of the underlined portion of this sentence, we will see it uses the structure – They denounce A while… supporting B. The same structure can be seen in OG 12 & 13#134 - Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the human sleep cycle have reduced sickness, sleeping on the job, and fatigue among shift workers while raising production efficiency in various industries.
The above correct sentence employs the same structure – “Shift-work equations have reduced… while raising…”
The semicolon is correctly followed by an IC.
Comma + verb-ing modifier “saying” correctly modifies the preceding clause. The parallelism is maintained between the two reasons stated for denouncing the government.
Also, the simultaneous action has been correctly written by using “while”. The phrase
at the same time” just lays more emphasis on this simultaneity of actions. This sentence has no errors.

PoE:

(A) they denounce the big government, saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time supporting: Correct as is for the reason stated above.

(B) they denounce big government- they say that government is doing too much and has become too powerful-but supporting at the same time: Incorrect. Use of “but” brings in contrast here. The intention is to talk about the simultaneity of actions. This is the reason why, in choice “while” has been followed by “at the same time”.

(C) they denounce big government, they say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful, while they support at the same time: Incorrect. The two ICS are connected by comma. This is a run-on sentence.

(D) while they denounce big government, saying that government is doing too much and has become too powerful, at the same time supporting: Incorrect. There is no IC after semicolon.

(E) while they are denouncing big government- they say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful-supporting at the same time: Incorrect. Same error an in Choice D.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

This is a sitter because straight away C,D E are out........

because of while.................. at the same time.............

They don't come together.
I mean while denouncing they support
But we don't say that while denouncing at the same time they support.

So left with A and B.
Coming to B,

They denounce the gov- they say.............
we cannot have they two times as mentioned in the above statment

So A

I'm thinking "out loud" a little bit here, and I'm not sure that I have this completely correct... but I don't think that the word "while" necessarily demands parallelism, or at least I never think of it that way. Whenever I see "and" or "or", I know that something HAS to be parallel, and those are the two parallelism "triggers" that show up the most often on the GMAT. But if there's a conjunction that joins a dependent with an independent clause, I don't actually think of it as parallelism, other than the fact that both clauses -- by definition -- need to have a subject and a verb. But that's not a very interesting form of parallelism, and there's no reason why the verbs couldn't be different tenses.

In this case, though, I think you might be struggling with a different issue: "while" doesn't explicitly require you to join a dependent clause with an independent clause. Here's a great explanation of the concept: https://gmatclub.com/forum/although-is- ... l#p1540391.

See if that article helps at all?

Great question! It really gets to the heart of why SC is so difficult - it can be very confusing to differentiate between a convention and a rule. Almost every prep company has at some point published a line about some construction being inherently wrong, only to see that construction show up in a correct OA.

It's useful to remember that the point of grammar isn't to torture students by having them internalize a bunch of arbitrary rules; it's to help make writing as clear and logical as possible. Even ironclad rules like subject-verb agreement serve this purpose. If you see a plural subject and a singular verb, you'll get confused! The rule is there to help the reader. So we want to rely on meaning and clarity, rather than internalizing lists of what is and isn't allowed.

Referring to the question you linked to, "each year... annually" isn't just "redundant" -- it doesn't make any sense! The word "annually" means "once a year" or "every year". But by saying "each year", we are talking about one single year at a time. Within a SINGLE year, you can't have something happening ANNUALLY. A redundancy can arguably be forgiven. An illogical meaning can't be.

Back to our example! First, let's re-examine that parallelism issue in (B):

"they say that government is doing too much and has become too powerful-but supporting at the same time many specific government programs..."

The conjunction "but" is signaling to the reader that two elements are linked. But the linked elements make it sound as though the government is doing too much and the government is supporting government programs. That doesn't make any sense! It's far more logical to write that people in the U.S sometimes denounce big government and sometimes support government programs.

Put another way: the faulty parallelism isn't wrong because of an arbitrary rule, but because it creates an incoherent sentence. This kind of error is indisputable.

Contrast that with the usage of "while... at the same time." First, it's true that "while" can mean "simultaneously," but it can also serve the same function as "although." For example:

"While Tim doesn't like children, he adores his nine daughters."

Here, "while" seems to mean "although," so a reader is going to have to use context to determine which interpretation is appropriate.

Seen in this light, "while...at the same time" isn't redundant at all - it actually helps clarify the meaning of "while." This is what good writing does! At the very least, it can't be said to be wrong in the same way (B), with its incoherent meaning, is.

The takeaway: always prioritize concrete, irrefutable errors first. If a meaning is incoherent, it's wrong. If subject and verb don't agree, it's wrong. But if you're not sure about an issue, default to thinking about your options in terms of logic and clarity.

Last, thank you for asking a tough question! There's an awful lot of nuance in sentence correction, and these types of questions help to clarify complex issues for other forum members and push us to be better teachers.

I hope that helps!

A recent poll indicates that
many people in the United States hold a combination of conservative and liberal political views; i.e.,
they denounce big government,
---saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful,
while at the same time supporting many specific government programs for health care, education, and the environment.

(A) they denounce the big government, saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time supporting

(B) they denounce big government- they say that government is doing too much and has become too powerful-but supporting at the same time
>>"But" is a conjunction, used to connect two independent clauses.
(C) they denounce big government, say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful, while they support at the same time
>> Missing proper conjunction to connect 2 clauses or verb.
(D) while they denounce big government, saying that government is doing too much and has become too powerful, at the same time supporting
>>Missing independent clause by starting the sentence with subordinate cluase "while".
(E) while they are denouncing big government- they say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful-supporting at the same time
>>Same as D.

Selected A by POE but sentence structure in A is still weird. Request others to share their view.

The biggest issue with (C) is that it seems to be making a botched attempt at parallelism:


The subject "they" performs two parallel actions in (C): "denounce" and "say", but there's no conjunction ("and") between the two verbs. The only other way this could be acceptable is if there's a conjunction ("and") followed by third parallel verb -- something like "they denounce big government, say X, and support Y..." -- but that's not the case here.

(A) correctly turns the verb "say" into a modifier: "saying...". And that makes tons of sense: "saying government is doing too much" is giving us extra information about the previous clause ("they denounce big government"). In (C), the parallelism isn't structured correctly because there's no conjunction between the two verbs "denounce" and "say" -- but you could also argue that those two actions shouldn't be parallel, anyway. "Saying government is doing too much" just modifies the phrase "they denounce big government."

I hope this helps!

Please always post the source.

this question is from GMATprep, OA is A.

In first part fo the sentence is a hidden meaning:
Look at it A recent poll indicates that many people in the United States hold a combination of conservative and liberal political views.
So at the same time they have conservative and liberl views.

Answer A perfectly suits in aforementioned meaning of the sentence:
they [people] denounce [express their views] big government, saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful - [conservative position], while at the same time supporting - [liberal position]

Saying, while supporting - must be parallel.

Interesting question!

Most importantly, if you thought that "while... at the same time" was a concrete error, you'd have to eliminate every option aside from (B), as the other answer choices all have some version of that construction.

Take a look at (B) again:


"But" is a parallel marker and should connect like forms. But there's nothing here that can be parallel to "supporting." It makes no sense to write that the government is doing too much... but supporting government programs. And "denounce," a verb, can't be parallel to "supporting," a modifier.

Because we've got a concrete error in (B), it means we're stuck with an answer that has a version of "while... at the same time," and we need to move on to other decision points.

Takeaway: if you think you've found a concrete error, but every viable answer choice contains this error, you were mistaken! Don't waste time fighting with the question-writer in your head. Look for other issues to evaluate instead.

I hope that helps!

Kaja,

The example you give is not the same. Our sentence has TWO modifiers of the main verb "denounce," which are then paralleled. Your example only has ONE modifier of the main verb "improved," so there's no need for parallel.

As for elevinty, I would agree. I'd much prefer the sentence without the comma. However, there's not a better option out there! For what it's worth, I don't like the question overall. A and C both are squidgy on the parallelism (the issue here is the comma, and in A, the use of "while...at the same time" in the third term).

-t

Hey GMATNinja,
All the options look wrong to me.
I feel in A, there is a lack of proper parallelism. they denounce big governments, saying that government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while supporting at the same time..........here denounce is not in parallel to supporting. I dont think supporting can be parallel to saying (just to justify the right answer). While introduces a dependent clause and needs to have a verb and must match in parallelism with the independent clause.
So, if all the options look wrong, how do we pick the best of them?

Consider this example:

"Tim eats dinner while swerving through rush hour traffic in his car."

In this sentence, "swerving" is something that Tim does WHILE he eats.

Similarly, "supporting" is something that the people do WHILE they denounce big government -- so it certainly "goes" with the verb ("denounce").

On the other hand, "saying" doesn't have a conjunction (like "while"). It's just a regular old -ing modifier stuck in front of the "while" clause. Both "saying" and "supporting" tell us more about the verb ("denounce"), but in very different ways.

I hope that helps!

The correct answer is A, not B. The construction is just like this:

"People do one thing while doing another."

There's nothing wrong with saying that. You could also say:

"People do one thing while they do another."

but you need to restate the subject (the "they" is not optional here) if you phrase the sentence this way. So you can say "I talk while eating", or "I talk while I eat" and either construction is fine. This sentence says "People denounce big government while supporting government programs", which is fine.

On an unrelated topic: the way this sentence uses "i.e." seems bizarre to me. It's correct to use "i.e." if the only combination of liberal and conservative views found in the poll is the specific combination the second half of the sentence describes. I would have thought the second half of the sentence was just an example of one such combination, in which case "e.g." and not "i.e." would be correct.

That's not what is happening here.
"Is doing" is just a verb, in what's known as the present continuous tense (IS/ARE + ___ING).

This tense is used for actions that are ongoing in the timeframe of the sentence itself (which must be the present!).


Please note the contrast with the so-called present tense, which does not indicate that an ACTION is currently ongoing. Actions in the present tense are typical / habitual actions performed by the subject. E.g., Grandmothers in that culture repair clothes for their families —> This isn't necessarily happening in the exact timeframe of the narration, but it's something that grandmothers REGULARLY do in the culture described.

The present tense for verbs describing STATES, on the other hand, does indicate that whatever state obtains right now (at the time of narration).
E.g., Fuel prices are high as a result of several effects of the Russia-Ukraine war. (Gas prices are high RIGHT NOW.)
There's no present continuous tense for state verbs. E.g., it's not possible to write "Gas prices are being high..."

Hey Kaja,

I'm not quite sure exactly what your question is. Yes, the other question you cite makes the same point as this one (that we can say "while at the same time X-ing"). As for parallelism, you have to work with what you're given. I'd love an answer choice that correctly paralleled the verbs "denounce" and "support." But it isn't here. That means they MUST be paralleling the other verbs. In other words, almost everyone DENOUNCES the government, but while doing so, some "SAY X" while others "SUPPORT Y."

Feel free to keep following up if I haven't answered your question!

-t

A recent poll indicates that many people in the United States hold a combination of conservative and liberal political views; i.e., they denounce big government, saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time supporting many specific government programs for health care, education, and the environment.

(A) they denounce the big government, saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time supporting Correct answer. Parallelism is maintained between "saying" and "supporting". No other apparent errors.

(B) they denounce big government- they say that government is doing too much and has become too powerful-but supporting at the same time Because "say" is put into a non-essential modifier, "denounce" and "support" must be parallel - not the case here. Eliminate

(C) they denounce big government, say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful, while they support at the same time "they denounce", "say" and "they support" are not parallel. Also, "at the same time" needs to come before "support", else it implies that they support two things at the same time. Eliminate.

(D) while they denounce big government, saying that government is doing too much and has become too powerful, at the same time supporting "while" at the beginning after the semi colon here makes what follows a dependent clause. Eliminate.

(E) while they are denouncing big government- they say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful-supporting at the same time Same error as in (C). Eliminate.

Hope this helps.

Hello @Anshul122333,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, "saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful" is a present participle phrase, wherein the clause "government is doing too much and has become too powerful" acts on the clause "they denounce the big government" and refers to what is being said by "they".

The use of the "comma + present participle ("verb+ing")" construction conveys that many people in the United States denounce the big government, in that they say the government is doing too much and has become too powerful.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team