Sentence Correction Guide - Economist GMAT

Question

Become a GMAT Sentence Correction expert

Think of a Sentence Correction (SC) problem as a hall of mirrors. In a hall of mirrors, each reflective surface gives you a distorted version of yourself, but of course you always maintain a sense of what you really look like. Sentence Correction problems present you with four distorted versions and one correct version of a sentence, and you must learn to identify what the correct version should be. SC problems are also disorienting; many look the same, and the differences are confusing.

In a hall of mirrors, we recognize what looks wrong at a glance, but it takes much more work to determine the errors in Sentence Correction questions. To master this section of the GMAT you will need to:

apply new concepts 
 have patience 
 listen for the meaning of the sentence 
 pay close attention to detail 
 trust the solving strategy

New concepts 
You will have to learn some basic grammatical concepts, such as Subject Verb Agreement, Pronouns and Parts of Speech. You will have to learn to recognize various correct and incorrect constructions in the sentence. Even if you never studied grammar, with some hard work, you will understand the basics. As for applying these concepts, Economist GMAT Tutor presents you with practice questions that incrementally get harder, testing one concept at a time and then in combination. As you progress, you will have a chance to identify these structures in sentences of increasing complexity. The same goes for principles of style – you will have to learn what is considered a preferable style, and what may be considered a stylistic flaw.

Four GMAT Sentence Correction skills to master 
Piece of cake! This problem is pretty straightforward, you think. While skimming through the answer choices, suddenly your optimistic mood darkens. You notice that the question and the first answer choice contain only one grammatical problem. But the rest of the answer choices may have up to two more critical areas to be examined. Let’s take a look at an example:

According to the American psychologist Howard Gardner, the concept of intelligence should be divided not only into linguistic and logical sections but also into a number of other sub-categories because there is constant displays of additional human abilities during everyday activities that are unaccounted for.

A. be divided not only into linguistic and logical sections but also into a number of other sub-categories because there is
B. not only be divided into linguistic and logical sections but also a number of other sub-categories because there are
C. be divided into linguistic and logical sections but also into a number of other sub-categories because there are
D. be divided not only into linguistic and logical sections but into a number of other sub-categories because there are
E. be divided not only into linguistic and logical sections but also into a number of other sub-categories as there are

The original sentence has one major error. The plural subject constant displays of additional human abilities does not agree with the singular verb is. Once the verb is located, it is important to ask what the subject of that verb is: Who/What is the doer, or in this case, there is what?

Answer choice B corrects the original Subject Verb Agreement error by matching the plural verb are with the plural subject constant displays of additional human abilities. However, it is still grammatically incorrect. In this answer choice, not only is followed by the verb be divided. But also, however, is followed by the noun number.

Answer C, on the other hand, also corrects the original Subject Verb Agreement error but remains grammatically incorrect. On the GMAT, but also should be preceded by not only, which is not the case here. Not only is missing.

Now let’s take a look at answer D. Although this answer choice again corrects the original Subject Verb Agreement error it is missing the word also.

Answer E is ... CORRECT! It corrects the original Subject Verb Agreement error and it also maintains Parallelism while using the not only/but also structure.

The main takeaway from this problem is that when tackling a Sentence Correction question, you need to be on the lookout for multiple grammatical issues

When the Whole Sentence is Underlined 
Students who otherwise feel quite comfortable with Sentence Correction often panic at a certain dreaded question type: questions in which all or most of the sentence is underlined.

The major concern I hear is that the questions are time-consuming and involve going over three to four lines of text with our eyes five times in succession. An otherwise competent Sentence Corrector may throw up her arms in despair and panic about solving the question in time.

I actually don’t think the issue is time – the issue is that these questions throw us off balance. We shouldn’t actually scan lightly here, but we should rather be reading for logic and clarity.

If we analyze typical sentences in which all the words are underlined, we discover that although such sentences may include any error type (subject-verb agreement, parallelism, pronouns, etc.), the most characteristic type of change in the answer choices are radical changes in the word order of the sentence. Underlining the whole sentence gives the question writers the freedom to turn the entire sentence inside out and upside down. These changes often affect the clarity of the sentence. In particular we should be on the lookout for misplaced modifiers.

Compare the following two constructions (O.G. 12 # 110):

a) Published in Harlem, the owner and editor of The Messenger were two young journalists, Chandler Owen and A Philip Randolph, who would later make his reputations as a labor leader.
b) The owner and editor being two young journalists, Chandler Owen and A Philip Randolph, who would later make his reputation as a labor leader, The Messenger was published in Harlem.

Neither one of these sentence is correct, but that’s beside the point. What’s important is to see how the internal components of the sentence have been shuffled around. Notice that the modifier that began sentence (a) – “Published in Harlem” – was pushed to the end of sentence (b) and became a clause “was published in Harlem.”

Without looking at all the answer choices (those of you with copies of the O.G. can do that for yourselves), we can extract a general principle. The answer choices are shuffling around segments of the sentence in ways that affect the meaning and logic. In sentence (a) “Published in Harlem” is out of place: we call this a misplaced or a dangling modifier. Why so? Because it is not “the owner and editor” of the The Messenger who was “published in Harlem” but The Messenger itself. We need to look for a sentence that arranges these elements in a logical fashion, but that is also correct in terms of grammar.

Sometimes there is more than one element in a sentence that can be shifted around. Develop an awareness of where things should be (logically) and how this affects the overall clarity and comprehensibility. You will be on your way to overcoming your fear of the mile-long underline.

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Sentence Correction Guide - Economist GMAT

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