rgohil wrote:
As part of their therapy, young polio victims learning to live with their disabilities were helped to practice falling during the 1950s, so that they could learn to fall without being hurt.
(A) As part of their therapy, young polio victims learning to live with their disabilities were helped to practice falling during the 1950s
(B) As part of their therapy, young polio victims learning to live during the 1950s with their disabilities were helped to practice falling
(C) Young polio victims learning to live during the 1950s with their disabilities were helped to practice falling as part of their therapy
(D) Young polio victims learning to live with their disabilities were helped to practice falling during the 1950s as part of their therapy
(E) During the 1950s, as part of their therapy, young polio victims learning to live with their disabilities were helped to practice falling
I'm happy to help with this.
I guess I don't think of this as a particularly GMAT-like SC question. What is the source?
It appears there are no strict grammatical errors, and much of the sentence revolves around rearranging the pieces to create a less awkward order.
For example, the phrase "
during the 1950s" ---- that phase is an overall description, not a description specifically of when these folks were "
falling" or "
learning to live" ----- the best location of this phrase at the beginning, set of by comma, adjacent to the part about the therapy (which was specific to that era). That leads to (E) as the best answer, but it's really not a model of fine English, and the differences between this and the other answer is not powerful. On a real GMAT SC, almost always some of the answer choices for each question are unambiguously grammatically incorrect --- many times, there are four grammatically incorrect answers and only one possible correct answer. Here, the differences are far less stark.
That's my 2 cents. This is the kind of question that actually makes me suspicious about the quality of the source.
Mike