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26 Jul 2022, 13:26
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woohoo921
GMATNinja
krittapat
GMATNinja
karishmaB
mikemcgarry
Could you please explain why option C is better than option A?
What makes option A wrong here?
I chose A because it follows subjunctive mood.
The parallelism in (A) creates an illogical meaning. Take another look:karishmaB
mikemcgarry
Could you please explain why option C is better than option A?
What makes option A wrong here?
I chose A because it follows subjunctive mood.
Quote:
The Eastern State Penitentiary was established in 1822 by reformers advocating that prisoners be held in solitary confinement and hard labor so as to reform them.
Here, the parallel elements are "solitary confinement" and "hard labor," making it seems as though prisoners are held in solitary confinement and held in hard labor. You can do hard labor. You can recommend hard labor. But held in hard labor? Nah.Contrast that with (C):
Quote:
The Eastern State Penitentiary was established in 1822 by reformers advocating solitary confinement and hard labor as the means to reform prisoners.
Notice that the same two elements are parallel, but now the both are preceded by "advocating," so the reformers were advocating solitary confinement and advocating hard labor. That makes way more sense.Because (C) creates a more logical meaning than (A), it's a better answer. Simple as that.
I hope that helps!
GMATNinja
Thank you for this helpful explanation. I am hoping to clarify with you on the discussion of the "them" being a vague pronoun in Choice A.
This is INCORRECT because it uses a vague pronoun! It’s unclear in the sentence if the pronoun “them” is referring to the prisoners reforming themselves, or if the prisoners are reforming the reformers.
I remember your very helpful lesson on the word "they" in that if "they" appears after a subject, it must logically refer back to the subject. Why doesn't "them" work similar to "they" in that it refers back to the closest subject... the "prisoners" in Choice A?
Thank you for all of your help.
(Note that "them" can never be the subject of a sentence, so this scenario is different than the one we discussed earlier in which "they" was the subject. But ultimately, the litmus test for pronoun usage is whether there's something that makes sense as an antecedent. If there is, we don't want to treat it as a concrete error.)
It's better to rely on the illogical meaning we explain in our earlier post: (A) makes it sound as though the prisoners are held in hard labor. You can do hard labor. But you can't be in it.
Quote:
Could you also please further explain the difference between "at sometime" vs "sometime" vs "some time"?
It's highly unlikely that this distinction will make any sort of difference on your exam, but here goes:- "Sometime": this suggests a range during which an action might happen. "Sometime between 3 and 4, Tim will finally feed his children lunch." It could happen at 3:05. It could happen at 3:57. All we know is that the feeding will occur within the specified range.
- If there's a difference between "at sometime" and "sometime", it's subtle enough that I wouldn't worry about it.
- "Some time": this suggests an action performed over an interval of time. "Tim spent some time in Tibet, irritating monks and angering wisdom-seekers." So Tim was being a nuisance in Tibet over an extended period.
But again, I wouldn't agonize too much over these distinctions.
I hope that helps!
05 Jan 2023, 08:22
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Quote:
The Eastern State Penitentiary was established in 1822 by reformers advocating that prisoners be held in solitary confinement and hard labor so as to reform them.
(A) advocating that prisoners be held in solitary confinement and hard labor so as to reform them
(B) who were advocating prisoners to be held in solitary confinement and hard labor for their reform
(C) advocating solitary confinement and hard labor as the means to reform prisoners
(D) who advocated solitary confinement and hard labor for the means of prisoner reform
(E) advocating as the means for prisoner reform solitary confinement and hard labor
(A) advocating that prisoners be held in solitary confinement and hard labor so as to reform them
(B) who were advocating prisoners to be held in solitary confinement and hard labor for their reform
(C) advocating solitary confinement and hard labor as the means to reform prisoners
(D) who advocated solitary confinement and hard labor for the means of prisoner reform
(E) advocating as the means for prisoner reform solitary confinement and hard labor
Hello avigutman,
On reading the sentence , I thought that the author wants to convey the idea that The Eastern State Penitentiary advocated the idea of keeping prisoners in solitary confinement and hard labor in order to reform them.
The OA C goes against this intended meaning.
Now as per C ,
The Eastern State Penitentiary advocated the idea of solitary confinement and hard labor.
I rejected Choice C right off the bat because of this change in intended meaning.
Moreover, when I did this question few months back , I approached this question through grammar prospective and chose C.
But down the road , I changed my approach of tacking question by looking at the intended meaning and then grammar.
I was reluctant to select A , but I could not convince myself to select C.
How to avoid this type of error in future.
Regards
05 Jan 2023, 16:34
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PriyamRathor
Hello avigutman,
On reading the sentence , I thought that the author wants to convey the idea that The Eastern State Penitentiary advocated the idea of keeping prisoners in solitary confinement and hard labor in order to reform them.
The OA C goes against this intended meaning.
Now as per C ,
The Eastern State Penitentiary advocated the idea of solitary confinement and hard labor.
I rejected Choice C right off the bat because of this change in intended meaning.
Moreover, when I did this question few months back , I approached this question through grammar prospective and chose C.
But down the road , I changed my approach of tacking question by looking at the intended meaning and then grammar.
I was reluctant to select A , but I could not convince myself to select C.
How to avoid this type of error in future.
Regards
On reading the sentence , I thought that the author wants to convey the idea that The Eastern State Penitentiary advocated the idea of keeping prisoners in solitary confinement and hard labor in order to reform them.
The OA C goes against this intended meaning.
Now as per C ,
The Eastern State Penitentiary advocated the idea of solitary confinement and hard labor.
I rejected Choice C right off the bat because of this change in intended meaning.
Moreover, when I did this question few months back , I approached this question through grammar prospective and chose C.
But down the road , I changed my approach of tacking question by looking at the intended meaning and then grammar.
I was reluctant to select A , but I could not convince myself to select C.
How to avoid this type of error in future.
Regards
Hello PriyamRathor,
Hope you are doing well. I will be glad to help you with this one.
At e-GMAT, we strongly advise our students to read the sentence ins smaller chunks to better understand and assimilate the meaning presented. So, let's just do so. The sentence says that the ESP was established in 1822. Who established it? Some reformers. What was their mantra? They said that prisoners should be held in solitary confinement. This part presents logical meaning. The reformers said something else. They said that prisoners must be held in hard labor. Does this structure presents logical meaning? What does it even mean to hold someone in hard labor? One can be subjected to hard labor or asked to do hard labor, but one cannot be help in hard labor. This is the logical issue with this sentence.
Now, let's take a look at Choice C. It says that reformers rooted for solitary confinement and hard labor to reform prisoners. So, reformers suggested two ways for reformations - solitary confinement and hard labor. This choice presents the logical meaning through correct grammar and hence, is correct.
So, the takeaway here is that read sentence is smaller chunks in the context of all information present in sentence. In case of lists, it makes all the sense to individually plug the elements in the list with the rest of the snetence to check for grammatical as well as logical parallelism.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
