All GMAT Ninja Complete Sentence Correction Explanations

All GMAT Ninja Complete Sentence Correction Explanations

Welcome to part 2 in our attempt to tame the tangle of mayhem we’ve unleashed on the verbal forums over the years. Last week, we jammed all of our full CR explanations into one post; on the thread you’re reading right now, you get to suffer through a list of all of our full SC explanations.

Lucky you. Keep reading for a bit of context on what to do with this pile of (digital) ink.

How to use these complete SC explanations

Warning: we’re about to echo a few things we said in our compilation of complete CR explanations. If you already read that, we won’t be offended if you skip ahead here.

So here it comes again: memorizing our explanations -- or anybody’s explanations -- is a complete waste of your time, especially for verbal questions.

Why?

This might sound obvious, but no two GMAT SC questions are exactly alike -- and no two official GMAT SC questions are even all that similar. Sure, some general themes and concepts certainly reappear in multiple questions, but if you blindly memorize the EXACT thought process for a particular SC question, you’ll miss the point.

Nobody likes to hear this, but the vast majority of sentence correction errors happen when the test-taker either fails to catch the EXACT meaning of the sentences, or fails to notice specific flaws in some of the answer choices. A good, full explanation will point out those flaws in a nice, clear way -- and a good explanation will also break down the small nuances of language that are at the heart of GMAT SC.

If we do our jobs well as explanation-writers, you’ll easily understand why the OA is correct. But after reading our SC explanations, will you be in a better position to understand the EXACT meaning of a totally different SC question, or to notice the most important differences between answer choices? Probably not. You might pick up some good tips on how to structure your thinking, or how to think about the grammar or usage in a specific question. But studying our explanations won’t make you a better, more precise reader -- and it definitely won’t do much to help you figure out where YOU went wrong in terms of your process on GMAT SC questions.

Instead, here’s how we recommend practicing sentence correction -- or anything else on the GMAT:

• After you’ve completed a set of practice SC questions, don’t review your mistakes (or read an explanation) right away. Instead, wait a few days, and then attempt the question again, doing your best to forget that you’ve ever seen it before.
• If you easily answer the question correctly when you redo it, pay close attention to what you did differently the second time -- and work on making whatever went right part of your process EVERY time you do a SC question.
• If you miss a question a second time, then reading a full explanation might help a bit. But keep in mind that one of your main goals is to figure out where YOU went wrong, and how YOUR personal process can be optimized. So use our explanations as a tool for learning and self-discovery -- not as a strict, step-by-step recipe.

Also, if you aren’t confident in your overall approach to critical reasoning, you might want to start with our beginner’s guide to SC, or our mountain of YouTube videos. We also discuss self-study strategies in depth in this video, and highlight a general approach to SC in this video and this one.

OK, rant over. Now, here’s the SC motherlode:

Recent Official Guide SC Questions (2020-present)

These are full explanations of SC questions that have appeared in the 2020 or more recent editions of the Official Guide. Fun!

• Without adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills...
• Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially...
• Based on accounts of various ancient writers, scholars have painted...
• Because an oversupply of computer chips has sent prices...
• Elizabeth Barber, the author of both Prehistoric Textiles, a...
• Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying...
• Hurricanes at first begin traveling from east to west, because...
• As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated...
• According to recent studies comparing the nutritional value...
• Nobody knows exactly how many languages there are in the world...
• Not trusting themselves to choose wisely among the wide array...
• Over the next few years, increasing demands on the Chattahoochee...
• Fossils of the arm of a sloth found in Puerto Rico in 1991...
• Like the grassy fields and old pastures that the upland sandpiper...
• Starfish, with anywhere from five to eight arms, have a strong...
• In ancient Thailand, much of the local artisans' creative energy...
• November is traditionally the strongest month for sales of light...
• Thelonious Monk, who was a jazz pianist and composer, produced...
• Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but it ran 363 miles...
• Despite the increasing number of women graduating from law school...
• As an actress and, more importantly, as a teacher of acting...
• The Supreme Court has ruled that public universities may collect...
• In 1923, the Supreme Court declared a minimum wage for women...
• According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a...
• Marconi’s conception of the radio was as a substitute for the...
• Unlike the buildings in Mesopotamian cities, which were arranged...
• In 1995 Richard Stallman, a well-known critic of the patent system...
• Heating-oil prices are expected to be higher this year than last...
• While it costs about the same to run nuclear plants as other types...
• Most of the country’s biggest daily newspapers had lower circulation...
• Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency...
• Building on civilizations that preceded them in coastal Peru, the...
• Scientists have recently found evidence that black holes—regions of...
• Almost like clones in their similarity to one another, the cheetah...
• Many of the earliest known images of Hindu deities in India date from...
• Excavators at the Indus Valley site of Harappa in eastern Pakistan...
• The Commerce Department reported that the nation's economy grew...
• Dinosaur tracks show them walking with their feet directly under...
• A site once used as an observatory by the Anasazi, ancient ...
• Chinese public buildings erected under a construction code of the...
• The first trenches that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar...
• A study of children of divorced parents found that ten years...
• It will not be possible to implicate melting sea ice in the coastal...
• Whereas a ramjet generally cannot achieve high speeds without the...

Old Official Guide SC Questions (pre-2020)

The following are full explanations of SC questions that appeared in older OG editions, but not in the editions published since 2020:

• Since 1986 when the Department of Labor began to allow...
• Many experts regarded the increase in credit card borrowing...
• Plants are more efficient at acquiring carbon than are fungi...
• Over 75 percent of the energy produced in France derives from...
• As a baby emerges from the darkness of the womb with a...
• In an effort to reduce their inventories, Italian vintners have...
• The company announced that its profits declined much less in...
• Dirt roads may evoke the bucolic simplicity of another century...
• The peaks of a mountain range, acting like rocks in a streambed...
• A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States...
• Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only...
• In no other historical sighting did Halley's comet cause such a...
• In 1713, Alexander Pope began his translation of the Illiad...
• Found throughout Central and South America, sloths hang from trees...
• Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson...
• A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses...
• Among the objects found in the excavated temple were small terra...
• In 1979 lack of rain reduced India's rice production to about 41...
• Neanderthals had a vocal tract that resembled those of the apes and...

Recent GMAT Verbal Review SC Questions (2020-present)

These guys appear in the 2020 or more recent versions of the GMAT Verbal Review guide:

• Sixty-five million years ago, according to some scientists...
• Certain pesticides can become ineffective if used repeatedly in the same place...
• Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor...
• Despite Japan’s relative isolation from world trade at the time...
• The world wildlife fund has declared that global warming, a...
• Heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved from the previous year...
• Unlike the United States, where farmers can usually depend on rain...
• Under high pressure and intense heat, graphite, the most stable...
• Twenty-two feet long and 10 feet in diameter, the AM-1 is one...
• The nephew of Pliny the Elder wrote the only eyewitness account...
• Although the first pulsar, or rapidly spinning collapsed star...
• The gyrfalcon, an Arctic bird of prey, has survived a close brush...
• Last year, land values in most parts of the pinelands rose almost...
• Less than 400 Sumatran rhinos survive on the Malay peninsula and...
• Schistosomiasis, a disease caused by a parasitic worm, is prevalent...
• Once numbering in the millions worldwide, it is estimated that the...
• Bluegrass musician Bill Monroe, whose repertory, views on musical...
• Over a range of frequencies from 100 to 5,000 hertz, monkeys and...
• Industry analysts said that the recent rise in fuel prices may be an...
• Industry analysts said that the recent rise in fuel prices may be an...

Old GMAT Verbal Review SC Questions (pre-2020)

And these exciting things are full explanations of SC questions that appear in pre-2020 editions of the GMAT Verbal Review guide, but not in the more recent versions:

• Scientists have observed large concentrations of heavy-metal...
• Lacking information about energy use, people tend to overestimate...
• The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a...
• The energy source on Voyager 2 is not a nuclear reactor...
• The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that...
• Under a provision of the Constitution that was never applied...
• Geologists believe that the warning signs for a major earthquake...
• Proponents of artificial intelligence say they will be able to make...
• In recent years cattle breeders have increasingly used crossbreeding...
• According to a study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement...
• Many kitchens today are equipped with high-speed electrical...
• However much United States voters may agree that there is waste...
• Reporting that one of its many problems had been the recent extended...
• Consumers may not think of household cleaning products to be hazardous...
• Downzoning, zoning that typically results in the reduction of housing...
• Although Napoleon’s army entered Russia with far more supplies...
• Though being tiny, blind, and translucent, a recently discovered...

GMAT Club Test SC Questions

If you’ve read a few of our forum posts, you probably know that we tend to discourage test-takers from relying on non-official GMAT verbal questions. GMAC spends literally thousands of dollars creating, testing, and perfecting each question that makes it into the exam; even the best test-prep companies can’t compete, and GMAT Club is charming and sexy, but (unfortunately!) no exception.

But if you’re here, odds are decent that you’re using the GMAT Club tests, so the list below features full explanations of some of our favorite SC questions from the GMAT Club tests. Full disclosure: we wrote or at least heavily edited most of these, but they’re still not perfect. So please take them with a grain of salt.

Also, if you still plan to take the GMAT Club verbal tests, we’d recommend holding off on reading these explanations -- they’ll definitely bias your results.

• Although the Ottoman Turks under the leadership of Suleiman...
• During the tenure of Steve Jobs, which was memorable as much...
• The pharmaceutical company conceded that its blockbuster drug...
• The Federal Republic of Brazil achieved independence in 1822...
• Many conservative voters who had previously supported the senator...
• A controversial study suggests that the violent behavior and poor...
• In its journal, the U.S.-based Minor Planet Center (MPC) announced...
• As the former CEO of Burberry, Angela Ahrendts built tech-savvy...
• The deer, despite having traveled hundreds of miles to reach the...
• Targeted toward the crucial 18-49 demographic, each of the...
• Since the end of the recently extended recession, prices for all...
• Speaking to the media at his annual news conference before Game...
• Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies, called coteries, of...
• In South Korea in the early 2000s, growth in the nation’s ten largest...
• A proposed law would require citizens to bring photo ID to polling...
• In contrast to the injury rates of supposedly dangerous activities...

Official MBA.com (formerly known as GMATPrep) SC Questions

Please be particularly careful with these!

The six official mba.com exams are the next-best thing to the real GMAT exam -- and if you’re already familiar with some of the questions, you’ll warp your results in unfortunate ways, as discussed in this article.

In other words: don’t read any of the full SC explanations on this list unless you’re SURE that you don’t plan to retake the mba.com exams.

• Unlike most severance packages, which require workers to stay until...
• Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans about 1750, they...
• Diesel engines burn as much as 30% less fuel than gasoline engines...
• After several years of rapid growth, the health care company became...
• A study of food resources in the North Pacific between 1989...
• NASA’s methodical approach to the exploration of Mars has not...
• Naked mole rats form colonies of approximately 20 animals, each...
• More than 300 rivers drain into Siberia's Lake Baikal, which...
• Critical-thinking instruction is predicated on two assumptions...
• Shipwrecks are more likely to be found undisturbed at great depths...
• The three women, liberal activists who strongly support legislation...
• Reptiles, by drawing their body heat directly from the Sun rather...
• None of the houses that Frank Lloyd Wright built in the Prairie...
• In some species of cricket, the number of chirps per minute used...
• As a result of a supernova explosion, every human being on Earth...
• The list of animals that exhibits a preference of either using the...
• In her later poems, Phyllis Wheatley's blending of solar imagery...
• The survival of coral colonies, which are composed of innumerable...
• Recent findings lend strong support to the theory that a black hole...
• A new test for AIDS has proved helpful in eliminating blood...
• Most of the purported health benefits of tea comes from antioxidants...
• The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three scientists for...
• Drawing on her roots in a society that has a strong tradition of...
• Experts estimate that ten times as much petroleum exists in...
• Based on records from ancient Athens, each year young Athenian...
• The hognose snake puts on an impressive bluff, hissing and rearing...
• In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary...
• Paper production accounts for approximately 40 percent of the...
• According to public health officials, in 1998 Massachusetts became...
• The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American...
• For many revisionist historians, Christopher Columbus has come...
• In the mid-1920’s the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company...
• First discovered more than 30 years ago, Lina's sunbird, a four-and...
• Unlike mainstream American businesses, more than half of which...
• Officials at the United States Mint believe that the Sacagawea dollar...
• According to a survey of graduating medical students conducted by...

Want more?

• All GMAT Ninja LIVE YouTube videos, by topic
• SC Guide for Beginners
• Beginners' guides to RC and CR
• All GMAT Ninja complete CR explanations
• How to improve from great (760) to incredible (780!) on SC
• An article about the GMAT’s many uses of “that”, including “that” pronouns and exceptions to the modifier “touch rule”
• For more exciting GMAT modifier action, check out this article on ”-ing” words…
• …or this article on “-ed” words
• An incredible master directory to official verbal questions, compiled by @carcass
• SC Verbal question bank and directories by Carcass
• Complete collection of official SCs by @souvik101990
• Our no-BS guide to GMAT idioms
• What to do about timing on GMAT verbal