Re: National Zoos
[#permalink]
07 Jul 2010, 04:56
National zoos involved in modernization have found the local citizens are difficult to reach, taciturn and are suspicious of innovations.
(A) the local citizens are difficult to reach, taciturn and are
(B) local citizens to be difficult to reach, taciturn and are
(C) that local citizens are difficult to reach, taciturn and
(D) local citizens are difficult to reach, taciturn and are they are
(E) that local citizens are difficult to reach, and taciturn and they are
The correct answer is C and I got through this by process of elimination and logical deduction.
The two major issues that directed me to correct answer to this question are idioms, and parallelism. As for idioms, you either have found that ..... or found ...... to be. This is the reason why A and D is incorrect. Then, we look for parallelism, answer choice B is not parallel found ..... to be, and found ..... are.
Then we're left with answer choice C and E which is almost the same except the last part (they are). E makes the meaning of the sentence a little ambiguous, who are they modifies. Did "they" modifies National Zoos or the local citizens? We are not sure about this. This is the reason why C is correct. Choice C uses the correct modification, it is clear that the local citizens are difficult to reach, taciturn, and suspicious of innovation.
For this questions, we have to take a sentence as is, not what you think the author intended the sentence to mean. Coming from a second language background like myself, this can be a tricky thing to do. American English expects you to just take the sentence almost literally, this holds true except when you read more sophisticated literary work then that's another story.