Events & Promotions
|
|
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.
Nov 1811:00 AM PST
-12:00 PM PST
Join us in a live GMAT practice session and solve 30 challenging GMAT questions with other test takers in timed conditions, covering GMAT Quant, Data Sufficiency, Data Insights, Reading Comprehension, and Critical Reasoning questions.
Nov 2211:00 AM IST
-01:00 PM IST
Do RC/MSR passages scare you? e-GMAT is conducting a masterclass to help you learn – Learn effective reading strategies Tackle difficult RC & MSR with confidence Excel in timed test environment- Nov 23
11:00 AM IST
-01:00 PM IST
Attend this free GMAT Algebra Webinar and learn how to master the most challenging Inequalities and Absolute Value problems with ease. 
Nov 2510:00 AM EST
-11:00 AM EST
Prefer video-based learning? The Target Test Prep OnDemand course is a one-of-a-kind video masterclass featuring 400 hours of lecture-style teaching by Scott Woodbury-Stewart, founder of Target Test Prep and one of the most accomplished GMAT instructors.
D
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
5%
(low)
Question Stats:
85% (01:32) correct
15%
(01:39)
wrong
based on 5269
sessions
History
Date
Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans about 1750, they made Conestoga wagons with high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie and they had a floor curved upward on either end so as to prevent cargo from shifting on steep grades.
(A) they made Conestoga wagons with high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie and they had a floor curved upward on either end so as to prevent
(B) they made Conestoga wagons, which had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and floors curved upward on their ends so that they prevented
(C) Conestoga wagons, with high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and had a floor that was curved upward at both ends to prevent
(D) Conestoga wagons had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and a floor that was curved upward at both ends to prevent
(E) Conestoga wagons had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie and floors curving upward at their ends so that it prevented
Subscribe to GMAT Question of the Day: E-mail | RSS
For All QOTD Questions Click Here
(A) they made Conestoga wagons with high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie and they had a floor curved upward on either end so as to prevent
(B) they made Conestoga wagons, which had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and floors curved upward on their ends so that they prevented
(C) Conestoga wagons, with high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and had a floor that was curved upward at both ends to prevent
(D) Conestoga wagons had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and a floor that was curved upward at both ends to prevent
(E) Conestoga wagons had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie and floors curving upward at their ends so that it prevented
This official question is similar but not identical to an official question that can be found HERE.
Verbal Question of The Day: Day 106: Sentence Correction
Subscribe to GMAT Question of the Day: E-mail | RSS
For All QOTD Questions Click Here
18 Sep 2017, 14:17
Kudos
Bookmarks
There's some nice, low-hanging fruit right at the beginning of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. And I like that sort of thing -- it makes life easier.
"Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans about 1750, ________" Well, the thing that fits in the blank MUST be something that can actually be developed by Palatine Germans, as discussed in our sexy guide to "-ed" words.
So with that in mind...
I'm also not crazy about the second "they" later in the sentence. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's awfully muddy -- "they" logically refers to "wagons", but "wagons" is way back in the sentence, hiding behind a whole bunch of other plural nouns, and that's not awesome. But the "-ed" modifier error is very definitely wrong, so (A) is out.
Or if you prefer, you could think of it this way: "and" is a parallelism trigger, and it's followed by the verb phrase "had a floor." But there's no verb phrase earlier in the sentence that "had a floor" could parallel to.
However you prefer to think of it, (C) is wrong.
So (E) can be eliminated, and (D) wins.
"Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans about 1750, ________" Well, the thing that fits in the blank MUST be something that can actually be developed by Palatine Germans, as discussed in our sexy guide to "-ed" words.
So with that in mind...
Quote:
... "they" doesn't make any sense here at all. "They" presumably refers to Palatine Germans -- the only plural noun earlier in the sentence -- and the Palatine Germans weren't developed by Palatine Germans. (I don't actually know much about the Palatine Germans, but maybe they developed really awesome baked goods? Because German bakeries are freaking fantastic. But maybe I already mentioned that in another QOTD explanation? I'll stop now.)
I'm also not crazy about the second "they" later in the sentence. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's awfully muddy -- "they" logically refers to "wagons", but "wagons" is way back in the sentence, hiding behind a whole bunch of other plural nouns, and that's not awesome. But the "-ed" modifier error is very definitely wrong, so (A) is out.
Quote:
I'm pretty much OK with everything in (B), other than the "-ed" modifier error -- it's the same mistake as in (A). So (B) is gone, too.
Quote:
The "-ed" modifier is fine now, but we don't really have a sentence anymore. "Conestoga wagons" is presumably the grammatical subject of the sentence, but there's never a main verb. "Had a floor..." would work, in theory, but the "and" messes it up.
Or if you prefer, you could think of it this way: "and" is a parallelism trigger, and it's followed by the verb phrase "had a floor." But there's no verb phrase earlier in the sentence that "had a floor" could parallel to.
However you prefer to think of it, (C) is wrong.
Quote:
This looks pretty good. The "-ed" modifier is fine, and the parallelism is fine, too: "and" is followed by "a floor that was curved upward..." -- and that's a noun that's parallel to "high wheels." No problem there: the list just consists of two things that the Conestoga wagons had. Keep (D).
Quote:
(E) isn't so different from (D), except for the very end of the underlined portion: "floors curving upward at their ends so that it prevented..." Whoa, WTF does "it" refer to here? "Floors" and "wagons" are plural, and I can't find anything else that could possibly make sense with that pronoun.
So (E) can be eliminated, and (D) wins.
07 Sep 2018, 13:33
Kudos
Bookmarks
milomingchao
Excellent questions!
Typically, when we have two objects associated with the same verb, there's no reason to separate them with a comma. A simple example:
- "When my daughter had the flu, she had muscle soreness and a hacking cough."
There's comma between "muscle soreness" and a "hacking cough." But if I wanted to describe the muscle soreness, I could use commas, either to separate the modifier from the rest of the sentence or to separate elements within the modifier:
- "When my daughter had the flu, she had muscle soreness in her back, neck, and toes, and a cough."
The modifier in red makes the sentence a little harder to parse, so it makes sense to include a comma at the end of it to communicate to the reader that I've finished modifying "muscle soreness." Put another way, almost any "rule" that posits that you can't use a comma in a certain scenario can be violated by sticking in a modifier. Commas are slippery animals. But the good news is that commas are very rarely a deciding factor on the GMAT. More on that in this video.
As for the second question, the sentence is about Conestoga wagons, in general. When we're writing about a plural noun in general, it's perfectly fine to attribute a singular quality to that noun. If I write, "Dodge Vipers come equipped with a laser that makes small animals go blind," there's no confusion about whether the Dodge Vipers are all sharing one laser. It's clear that each car individually has this feature. (Note: this feature does not, and should not exist.)
But if I'm writing about a particular plural noun, the usage is a little different. For example, if I write, "The Goldstein brothers have a bike with a broken axle," I'm not suggesting that each brother has such a bike. Rather, there appears to be just one bike that the Goldstein brothers have to share. The difference is that now I'm referring to particular brothers, as opposed to the generic idea of brothers.
I hope that helps!
