|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
24 Mar 2020, 23:42
Kudos
Bookmarks
C
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
65%
(hard)
Question Stats:
46% (01:25) correct
54%
(01:30)
wrong
based on 740
sessions
History
Date
Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
Curious about the possibility of inducing false memories, the researchers designed a test that would test the subject’s tendency to remember things that had never actually happened.
A) the researchers designed a test that would test the subject’s tendency to remember things
B) the researchers designed a test that would test subjects’ tendencies to remember things
C) the researchers designed a test that would test subjects’ tendencies to create memories of things
D) some people studied by researchers have tendencies to create memories of things
E) some people, studied by researchers, have tendencies to remember things
24 Mar 2020, 23:47
Kudos
Bookmarks
Project SC Butler: Day 231 Sentence Correction (SC1)
Curious about the possibility of inducing false memories, the researchers designed a test that would test the subject’s tendency to remember things that had never actually happened.
A) the researchers designed a test that would test the subject’s tendency to remember things
B) the researchers designed a test that would test subjects’ tendencies to remember things
C) the researchers designed a test that would test subjects’ tendencies to create memories of things
D) some people studied by researchers have tendencies to create memories of things
E) some people, studied by researchers, have tendencies to remember things[/quote]
• Split #1: the misplaced modifier (or, the runaway noun)
The introductory phrase is a noun modifier. (Someone is curious. A someone is a noun.)
The "Touch Rule" states that a noun modifier must be as close as possible to the noun that it modifies.
Right after we read Curious about the possibility of inducing false memories, we should be reading about who is curious.
Who is curious? The researchers.
But options D and E incorrectly tell us immediately about "some people" [the subjects of the research] rather than the researchers.
Eliminate options D and E.
• Split #2 - meaning (OR: let the options guide your strategy)
Options A and B are Big Hints.
They are almost identical.
Although you may not be sure whether GMAC can fairly ask you to choose between A and B (no), you should notice how close options A and B are.
Strategy tip: when two answers are almost identical and it seems or is impossible to choose between them, neither is correct.
If you are short on time, choose C on this basis alone and move on.
If you are not short on time, you compare the language in C on one hand, and A and B on the other, bearing in mind that
(1) if something did not happen, we cannot remember it, and
(2) in order to "remember" something that did not happen, we must create memories of that thing
Options A and B are kinda absurd.
We cannot have "tendencies" to remember things that have not happened.
By definition, if something did not happen, we cannot remember it.
The important verb present in (C) is "create."
That is, we can have "tendencies" to create memories of things that never happened.
Eliminate A and B.
The best answer is C.
NOTES
• There is nothing special about option A.
Praveenksinha , a few test prep companies incorrectly teach that option A determines intended meaning.
Old posts on many forums similarly broadcast this incorrect information.
I've written at least a dozen posts about this issue.
There is nothing special about option A.
No one should ever eliminate an answer because its meaning departs from that in option A.
I explained the issue in this recent post, here.
I cited to another post I wrote that contains three official examples (of many) in which option A could not possibly have been the intended meaning.
I cited three other experts who have more than four decades' worth of combined GMAT teaching experience and who all state that there is nothing special about option A.
It is hard to hear diametrically opposed directives.
Look at the examples I give and the other experts I cite.
Read what I think is the best book in the business on SC: Manhattan Sentence Correction.
(Not the easiest to follow. But in terms of content, it ranks at or near the top.)
You will find no mention of option A's allegedly privileged position.
• Dangling or misplaced modifiers, stray nouns, and introductory phrases
If the introductory phrase is a noun modifier, it must modify the main subject of the subsequent clause, which almost always is the first noun after the comma.
GMAC frequently tests introductory phrases.
I explain how six different types of introductory phrases work in this post, here.
COMMENTS
PoojanB (nicely done!) and Praveenksinha , welcome to SC Butler.
zhanbo , this question is actually hella good.*
It reminds us to think about logical meaning, which is easy to forget when you are focused on rules of writing.
Kudos to all.
** Every year, GMAC's new questions increasingly turn on meaning.
I'm not free to rewrite copyrighted material that is not my own. Doing so is illegal.
If you have issues with questions, you are always welcome to go and find questions that you can "guest post," which I discuss after the first two posts on the main Butler SC page, here.
In fact, take 15 minutes, right now or soon, and see whether you can find a good unused question for SC Butler.
If you are successful, I'd be interested to know how you did so and much obliged if you explained.
General Discussion
25 Mar 2020, 00:18
Kudos
Bookmarks
I chose (C). It took me 1 minute and 20 seconds.
For modifier "Curious about the possibility of inducing false memories" to work properly, the subject of the sentence has to be "the researchers" instead of "some people". So (D) and (E) are out.
Now, between (A), (B), and (C), a major split is that (A) and (B) use "remember things that had never actually happened" but (C) uses "create memories of things that had never actually happened". Since those things had never actually happened, I think "create memories" makes more sense.
Also, in (A), "the subject" refers to one specific person, which is not clearly identified.
BTW, "a test that would test"? Reusing the same word is quite clumsy.
For modifier "Curious about the possibility of inducing false memories" to work properly, the subject of the sentence has to be "the researchers" instead of "some people". So (D) and (E) are out.
Now, between (A), (B), and (C), a major split is that (A) and (B) use "remember things that had never actually happened" but (C) uses "create memories of things that had never actually happened". Since those things had never actually happened, I think "create memories" makes more sense.
Also, in (A), "the subject" refers to one specific person, which is not clearly identified.
BTW, "a test that would test"? Reusing the same word is quite clumsy.
