eybrj2 wrote:
It was the coincidence of the geographic range of the sickle cell gene and malaria that first drew attention to the possibility that the sickle cell gene might confer resistance to the disease.
(A)
(B) It was the geographic range of the sickle cell gene coinciding with malaria that
(C) The geographic range of the sickle cell gene coinciding with malaria was what
(D) The geographic ranges of the sickle cell gene and malaria coinciding was what
(E) It was that the geographic ranges of the sickle cell gene and malaria were coincident that
What's wrong with c?
Lets see if I can explain this one!
sickle cell and malaria are parallel, as marked by the "and" in between.This means that we can take words that need to appear in both as common.
So, we can see now that "geographic range of the" is common.
If you see it in that form, option A looks correct.
Additionally, in D, "ranges" is plural and "was" is singular. In E, what does the first "that" refers to?
In C, "and" is missing, so it is saying, geographic range coincided with malaria.B is active voice of C and has the same error as "C".
So, using Process of Elimination, we come to the same conclusion.