Some Questions Regarding Verbal

Question

Hi all, I have been practicing some reading exercises to beef up my reading/reasoning skills. I am reading articles from credible sources (e.g. economist), which are known to have a language on par with GMAT language. So as to have a better grasp in language structure, ı take notes of sentences that includes eerie parallel structures, comparison etc. and think on them to internalize the structures. In brief, ı have some questions according to these sentences, Regarding Comparison; -Colombia produces more cocaine now than at the height of Pablo Escobar’s power in the 1990s . Here, is it normal to compare current moment "now" to the "at the height of P.E's power in the 1990s"? ı can infer that it tries to compare "now" to the "1990s", as well as adding extra info that 1990s were when P.E was at the height of his power, but could that structure be accepted grammatically, from a GMAT perspective? Or should we just skip the "at the height..." and just leave "in 1990s" - Otoniel's arrest was the toughest blow to drug trafficking in Colombia this century, comparable to when Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993 . Here, we are trying to compare Otoniel's arrest to death of P.E to emphasize how important this arrest is. However, according to this structure we are grammatically comparing an arrest "Otoniel's arrest" to a time "when Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993" IMO, it would be better if it just said Otoniel's arrest was the..., comparable to killing of P.E in 1993. Am ı thinking correctly? If you are already fed up with my comparison question, ı have another grammar question as well

Regarding Grammar; - Pushing for this deal is Egypt , which, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is a staunch ally of Mr Burhan and is thought to have encouraged his putsch. I am not sure what that very first bold clause is (maybe an inversion that ı am not aware of?) but how is it possible to say "Pushing..is Egypt...is a staunch ally" isn't that grammaticaly wrong? Bonus Question; Egypt is a staunch ally of Mr.Burhan and is thought to have encouraged his putsch ı think there is a little parallelism here, or maybe ı am being utterly wrong, but is it totally ok to omit the subject after parallelism trigger "and" in sentences that include parallelism? ı am asking this because if we look to the right-hand part of the trigger we see "is though to.." , (a verb + object) whereas if we look to left-hand part we see "Egypt is a staunch ally", (subject + verb+object), and normally in a parallel structure we would want the both sides to follow same pattern ı hope ı didn't ruin your day with my questions

Expert views are highly valued Also please tell me if ı am doing good for my gmat by thinking these sentence analyses while ı read articles or if ı am just wasting my time. I really want to improve my verbal score, which is currently hovering around 28-32 according to mock tests ı took, and since english is not my native language ı struggle a lot when reading, trying to capture meaning and reasoning Thank you so much in advance, Have a wonderful day!

deepverma · Answer

I would like to attempt bonus question ☺️.
S-v inversion is one concept in manhatten book. That applies here.
first drop phrase "along wd ...emirates" as non-essential modifier between two commas.

Pushing for this deal is Egypt, which is a staunch ally of Mr Burhan and is thought to have encouraged his putsch.

So which is ... And is... Are parallel and modifying Egypt.

Now comes inverted S-v structure.
Core Sentance is - Egypt is pushing for this deal

Why inverted? - because we wanted to add modifier to word egypt. We could have done adding in start of Sentance but that will not emphasis the imp point- core Sentance.

I hope i wrote it with clarity.

Overall you are doing right thing.Continue such efforts nd ping/tag experts. You will get replies.

Bonus tip

- Revise key concepts in Sc and keep reading economist. Eventually u will be able to visualize all those rules in your reading materials

Posted from my mobile device

- Revise key concepts in Sc and keep reading economist. Eventually u will be able to visualize all those rules in your reading materials Posted from my mobile device

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

I am reading articles from credible sources (e.g. economist), which are known to have a language on par with GMAT language.

Probably fair to say staying with Official Sentence correction questions would be safer. There's a particular word combo the GMAT itself uses in its OWN Reading Comprehension section, for example, that is incorrect/highly likely to be wrong/in the wrong answer choice in its Sentence Correction section.

EducationAisle · Answer

From a strictly GMAT SC perspective, I would expect the following version to be the correct version:

Colombia produces more cocaine now than  it did  at the height of Pablo Escobar’s power in the 1990s.

The reason is that generally speaking, when the  time-frame  changes (now vs 1990s), GMAT likes to be explicit with tenses (produces vs produced).

Yep..completely fine and happens all the time. For example:

gloomybison got confused and asked a question .

Parallelism is between  got  and  asked .

BrightOutlookJenn · Answer

Hi  gloomybison

You are absolutely doing the right thing by analyzing the grammar and style of what you read, and trying to assess whether it would be a good answer choice on GMAT SC.

I want to take a moment here to make 2 points.

First,  let's clear up a potential misconception. The Economist is a terrific source for reading (and improving your knowledge in general) but IT IS NOT A MODEL FOR GMAT SENTENCE CORRECTION.

The Economist is published in London. The GMAT is written in the United States and uses a form of what I'd call American Business English, most comparable to the style of The New York Times. (NYTimes isn't even a perfect model though; sometimes they have grammar issues in breaking news due to what I can only guess is insufficient editing before publishing online.)

You will see The Economist write in ways that would be suspicious or even dead wrong on GMAT SC. The most obvious thing in my mind is using "which" to introduce important information (GMAT almost always uses "which" to introduce bonus info), but there are other instances of using UK idioms that would be wrong on the GMAT ("different to" instead of "different from/than") or preferring some heavy phrasing that is almost always associated with wrong answers on GMAT SC ("having been -ed" at the start of a sentence, for example).

Does this mean you should quit reading The Economist? Not at all - it's a tremendous publication. But please do not use it as a reference for GMAT SC.

Second , when analyzing SC answer choices, I suggest sorting them into 3 categories: Right, Suspicious, and Wrong. GMAT Verbal has some shades of grey, and your task in any Verbal question is not to find the world's best answer, but rather to choose the best answer of the 5 given. A Wrong answer choice will never be the credited answer, but a Suspicious one might turn out to be the best option of the five, if the other four are all Wrong. With parallelism, sometimes you could envision a more parallel structure, but it isn't one of the given answer choices. (Like your Bonus question - it's not parallel in every possible way, but both parts do start with "is" and make logical sense with Egypt, so it's acceptable.)

Does this help? Let us know.

Bright wishes, Jennifer

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