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tejal777
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tejal777
Q2. The decline in student's performance on state wide tests has been documented by a no. of researchers, but what is more difficult to determine are the root cause of this decline, the reason for the lack of equality between school systems, and the degree to which teachers can be held accountable.

a. ..
b. has been documented by a no. of researchers, but what is more difficult to determine is
c. have been documented by a no. of researchers, but what is more difficult to determine are
d. is documented by a no. of researchers, but what has been more difficult to determine are
e. are documented by a no. of researchers, but that which is more difficult to determine is

OA:
Allright guys,sorry for posting two queries in one page,but have the same querie in both.
I have solved a large no. of SC's but i keep on getting stuck while IDENTIFING subject n' verb and that follows with have difficulty in recognising if its singular/plural.
So I thought I'll get to the bottom of this..i DO NOT want your answers,I want help in the subject/verb and singular/plural dept.

Subject is "The decline in student's performance on state wide tests", which is singular. So it needs singular verb "has". C and E are out for that reason and A, B and D remain. A and D are out for "are", which cannot be the verb of the singular subject "what is more difficult to determine". That leaves B as the answer.
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gijoedude
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I am going with B. The subject is tax codes NOT Homestead ACT. Tax codes is plural so it should be offer not offers. So you can eliminate C,D and E. Out of A and B, B seems more concise.
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nimrod
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B for the 1st question...
C,D,E are eliminated because of subject verb agreement...Tax codes is plural and requires "offer" instead of "offers"...
A is eliminated because it is relief which "enables" and not "enable"...
Left with B...

For the second question...it is B..
C and E are out because "decline" requires singular usage...
Now after the underlined part we see that the noun cause requires singular usage again... A and D use "are" instead of "is"...
Left with B...
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In the first question use of 'many' makes it clear that options with 'offers' are wrong, and also singular tax relief enables something, so options with 'enable' are out. Then only 1 option B remains. In second question , please see the words that come after underlined part -- 'the root cause of this decline' If it was causes and not cause, then only plural 'are' would have been used. However second sentence is tricky, it uses 'a number of' after the subject. If the sentence was flipped it would have read 'a number of researchers HAVE documented'.
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B and B for both. Nice explanation



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