To improve on Sentence Correction, think of it as a logic puzzle

Sentence Correction on the GMAT is a deceptive logic puzzle. It's deceptive because it looks like it's just a question of grammar, but that's not the case. Take this question, for instance:

A professor at the university has taken a sabbatical to research on James Baldwin's books that Baldwin wrote in France while he was living there.

(A) on James Baldwin's books that Baldwin wrote in France while he was living there
(B) about the books James Baldwin wrote in France
(C) into James Baldwin's books written while in France
(D) on the books of James Baldwin, written while he lived in France
(E) the books James Baldwin wrote while he lived in France

Grammatically, all of the answers check out. Verbs are fine, parallelism is fine (and non-existent), and the pronouns are, at first glance, appropriate.

So how do we pick out the right answer? You guessed it: through logic!

Specifically, logic comes in when we answer the question behind the question: how do we efficiently and grammatically convey the intended meaning of the sentence? (Note: the nice thing about sentence correction is that this "question behind the question" never varies. We should ask this about every single question in this section.)

...

So, how do we solve this problem? Well, the correct answer is E. Let's see how they solve the pronoun confusion issue.

e) "A professor at the university has taken a sabbatical to research the books James Baldwin wrote while he lived in France".

Nice! So, first of all, we solve the idiom issue (research doesn't take a preposition).

More importantly, however, we solve the pronoun issue, and thereby efficiently and grammatically convey the meaning of the sentence. We set up "James Baldwin" as a subject, and then, we we use the pronoun "he" as a subject right next to James Baldwin, it's pretty obvious that it refers back to James Baldwin.

To use an alternative sentence, it'd be like, "The dog chewed on the homework the boy had struggled over while he waited for the school bus."

The "boy" is a subject, "he" is a subject, and using "he" close to "the boy" means that it refers back. The dog isn't waiting for the school bus, in other words.

Plus, unlike A, we don't have to repeat Baldwin more than once, and, unlike b or c, we don't have to skip out on the really important information that James Baldwin lived in France while he was writing these books.

Now, how do we take this as a broader lesson for sentence correction?

The broader lesson is that every sentence correction question is a logic puzzle: solve for the meaning while keeping grammar and efficiency as your rules or guidelines. And, when you get the question wrong, your explanation in your error log needs to explain how the correct answer solves that logic puzzle.

excerpted from a long blog post I wrote on Sentence Correction