While some academicians believe that business ethics should be

The difference between (B) and (C) is the placement of 'only', which changes the meaning. Let's start with (B).

B) only if it is taught as a separate, required course

The meaning of 'ethics will only be taught if...' is that the other alternative would be to not teach ethics. Notice the placement of 'only' is right before 'taught.'

C) if it is taught only as a course required separately

Here the debate is no longer whether ethics will be taught, but how it will be taught. Essentially (C) is saying that ethics will not be taught as a combined course or an integrated course, or any course for that matter. It will taught only as a separate course. This changes the original meaning of the sentence.

Hope that helps!

Problem here in C is the misplaced modifier ‘only. Normally, the limiting adverb ‘only’ modifies an action that follows it. In this thread –only- modifies the verb of teaching in A and B; whereas in C it modifies the course, which changes the meaning, that the students will take it, if is not taught as a course but as something else such as in a symposium or seminar.
With regard to course required separately, the adverb tends to modify the noun –course-; and modifying a noun is not the function of an adverb; an adverb can only modify a verb or adjective. If it were --separately required course --, then it will be ok, since the adverb –separately- now modifies the adjective required.

In C, the term required is not a verb; it is past participle and adjective modifying the noun -course-.

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of the crucial part of this sentence is that students will take ethics seriously only if it is taught as a course that is both separate and required.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Tenses

• Habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense.
• The simple future tense is used to refer to actions that will take place in the future.
• The simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past.

A: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "separately required course"; the use of the adverb "separately" to modify the adjective "required" incorrectly implies that students will take ethics seriously only if it is taught as a course that is required in a separate manner; the intended meaning is that students will take ethics seriously only if it is taught as a course that is both separate and required. Further, Option A incorrectly uses the simple future tense verb "would be taught" to refer to a hypothetical habitual action; please remember, habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense, and the simple future tense is used to refer to actions that will take place in the future.

B: Correct. The sentence formed by this answer choice uses the phrases "take ethics seriously only if" and "separate, required course"; the use of the adverb "only" to modify the verb phrase "take...seriously" and the use of the adjective "separate" to modify "course" correctly imply that students will take ethics seriously only if it is taught as a course that is both separate and required. Further, Option B correctly uses the simple present tense verb "is taught" to refer to a hypothetical habitual action.

C: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "taught only as a course required separately"; the use of the adverb "only" to modify "taught" and the use of the adverb "separately" to modify the adjective "required" incorrectly imply that students will take ethics seriously if the only way it is taught is as a course that is required in a separate manner; the intended meaning is that students will take ethics seriously only if it is taught as a course that is both separate and required.

D: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "taught only"; the use of the adverb "only" to modify "taught" incorrectly implies that students will take ethics seriously if the only way it is taught is as a course that is required and separate; the intended meaning is that students will take ethics seriously only if it is taught as a course that is required and separate. Further, Option D incorrectly uses the simple past tense verb "was taught" to refer to a hypothetical habitual action; please remember, habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense, and the simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past.

E: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "only be taught as a required course, separately"; the use of the adverb "only" to modify "taught" and the use of the adverb "separately" to modify the adjective "required" incorrectly imply that students will take ethics seriously if the only way it is taught is as a course that is required in a separate manner; the intended meaning is that students will take ethics seriously only if it is taught as a course that is both separate and required. Further, Option E incorrectly uses the simple future tense verb "would...be taught" to refer to a hypothetical habitual action; please remember, habitual actions are best conveyed through the simple present tense, and the simple future tense is used to refer to actions that will take place in the future.

Hence, B is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

B is the right one.

Understand the meaning. Removing modifiers and clauses, the sentence simply means "Students will take this subject seriously ONLY if it is taught as separate course."

C is flawed in multiple ways.
- Placement of 'only'
- "course required separately" doesn't mean the same thing as "separate, required course."
- In correct choice separate and required are two modifiers - adjectives - modifying the noun 'course'. Which is the right way.
- In C separately modifies verb require and acts as adverb. - wrong

I am happy to help!
Rule: If...Then construction.
If Present......Then Present(is/am/are..etc)/May/Will

If Past...........Then Simple Past
Past Perfect......Would have.

So, As per the rule...A,D,E out.
Between B and C. C change the intended meaning.
So, B.

Hope this helps!

Dear Ergenekon,

Good question indeed.

Let’s look at another sentence to understand what’s going on in the correct answer to the official question. Consider the following simple sentence:

Emily was a smart, young girl.

In the above sentence, the words smart and young correctly describe the noun girl. Do you agree to that? If yes, do you see how the words smart and required play a similar role in the sentence referred to by you?

Please do let me know what you think.

Regards,
Neeti.

Amit.

"I'll refer only GMAC approved study material". Is the sentence correct? If yes, then here a noun follows only.

In your example. only modifies not GMAC but 'GMAC- approved' -- in fact, it would be better to hyphenate it as I have done. Therefore,'Gmac-approved" is an adjective, which is what only modifies. You may see that even the noun study acts as an adjective in this case. The real noun, namely, material is fr away from the adverb , 'only'; Hope this clarifies.

Hi
This was a very informative post.
I want to add one thing- Cumulative adjectives are generally not separated by comma.

Punctuating Coordinate Adjectives and Cumulative Adjectives
"Using commas with multiple adjectives is another challenge; fortunately, the rules are straightforward.
1. Can you put the word and between the adjectives and have the sentence still make sense?2. Can you reverse the order of the adjectives and have the sentence still make sense?
If you can do those two things, then use a comma between the adjectives because each adjective is describing the noun. These are called coordinate adjectives.
Aardvark is a hairy and small animal.
Aardvark is a small and hairy animal.Aardvark is a small, hairy animal.
You can use and between the adjectives and reverse the order in the examples above, so you use a comma.

"When your adjectives don't meet the above criteria--when you can't reverse the order or put and between them and have them still make sense--they are called cumulative adjectives. They are adjectives that build on each other, and you don't put a comma between them. For example, in the following sentence, you can't change the order of the adjectives four, green, and Easter:
Squiggly found four green Easter eggs.
Squiggly found green four Easter eggs. (yuck!)
Squiggly found Easter green four eggs. (yuck!)Squiggly found green Easter four eggs. (yuck!)
Remember, you can test whether you're dealing with cumulative or coordinate adjectives by checking if it's possible to switch them around."

Source:https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-cumulative-adjectives-1689815

Going into the meaning aspect, let us analyze B first.
Meaning:
B) Only if it is taught as a separate (as an exclusive), required (mandatory or compulsory) course. So there are two adjective elements to complete the original intent, i.e.: exclusive and compulsory.
C: if it is taught only as a course required separately- here the word required does not convey compulsoriness. C carries only one of the two intents namely 'exclusiveness'. Here the word 'required' is not meaning compulsoriness. To that extent, the original meaning is fractured. This is just a ploy of vocabulary.

Hi UNSTOPPABLE12,

A follow-up question is never a problem. In fact, I myself am not sure about exactly when we would use required separately when we're talking about a course (possibly because I don't think I've come across anything like "the course is required separately" before). A second opinion would be useful here.

If we look at the first half of the sentence, we see a contrast indicator (while) and the idea it introduces is that business ethics should be integrated into every business course.

While some academicians believe that business ethics should be integrated into every business course...

It seems logical to say that the opposite of a course that is integrated into every business course is a separate course, where separate is an adjective for the noun course. If instead we use separately, to describe required, then the meaning that we're looking for (that the course is ~compulsory and it is a separate course) is lost (or not as clear).

The course is compulsorily separate. ← This is not a very good example, but do you see what I mean? This sentence does not really tell us that the course is both compulsory and separate.

Hi UNSTOPPABLE12,

It's not that there is no verb (form) for separately in option C (it clearly points to required, a participle). The problem is that "required separately" doesn't make sense here.

1. a course required separately ~ The course is {required in a separate way}.
2. a separate, required course ~ The course is {a separate course} and it is also {a required course}.

Norgay

Separate and required are called coordinate adjectives and do not require a conjunction between them. A comma will suffice. B the correct grammatical structure.

Pl. see the following link.

https://www.write.com/writing-guides/gen ... djectives/

daagh

Absolutely correct @sagarsangani123; more than looking at it from a tense perspective, this is basically a wrong conditional construct.

It's actually a handy little thing to remember that the if portion (in this case if it would be taught as a separately required course should never have a will/would).

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses conditional constructs, their application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

This question popped up on our Ask Me Anything About SC thread. We're reposting the answer here, just in case it helps anybody.

The good news is that the GMAT is not meant to be a grammar test, and you'll never be asked what a modifier technically modifies. And unfortunately, I don't think that memorizing an exhaustive list of "rules" governing adverbs and adjectives would do much good -- in fact, it might just encourage you to think too mechanically instead of focusing on meaning and logic.

With that in mind, let's take a look at a simplified version of choice (B) both with and without the "only":

• "Students will take ethics seriously if it is taught as a separate, required course." - Here we have a simple if-then statement (no "only"). IF ethics is taught as a separate/required course, THEN students will take ethics seriously. Notice that there might be OTHER ways to get students to take ethics seriously -- for example, IF there is a Netflix mini-series about the importance of ethics or IF Kim Kardashian tells everyone to take ethics seriously. Teaching ethics as a separate/required course is ONE way to get students to take ethics seriously, but it's not necessarily the ONLY way.
• "Students will take ethics seriously only if it is taught as a separate, required course." - Putting the "only" back changes the meaning entirely. Now there is in fact only ONE way to get students to take ethics seriously, and that's by teaching ethics as a separate/required course. Do we care what exactly the "only" modifies? Not really. What matters is what it does to the meaning. In other words, we care about the function, not the technical label. What matters is that we are distinguishing between a simple "if-then" condition and an "if ONLY-then" condition.

Now let's look at a simplified version of your "Statement 2": "Students will take ethics seriously if it is taught only as a separate, required course."

• The position of the "only" has been changed, and this does change the meaning a bit. Now we are distinguishing between (1) teaching ethics as a separate/required course and (2) teaching ethics ONLY as a separate/required course.
• In this case, the focus is on the teaching part -- maybe there are many different ways that we could teach ethics (i.e. as a separate course that is NOT required, as part of some other course(s), as an instructional video game that students are free to access, whatever...). And maybe we want to utilize more than one of those options. Without the word "only," notice that it doesn't matter what OTHER options are available -- as long as we have the separate/required course, students will take ethics seriously.
• But as soon as we add the word "only", things change. Now it sounds as though making those OTHER options available would actually be a problem. If we have a separate/required course BUT also have all those other options, students might NOT take ethics seriously! Why? Because apparently students will take ethics seriously if it is taught ONLY as a separate/required course (and not taught any other way).

Phew, that's a bit confusing. Luckily, the GMAT isn't asking us to worry about that distinction here. As long as you understand what the "only" does to choice (B), you've done your job. And unfortunately memorizing a bunch of rules is unlikely to help.

Instead, if you're ever confused about the word "only" is doing in a sentence, ask yourself, "What is the difference in meaning between the sentence WITH the 'only' and the sentence WITHOUT the 'only'?" (As explained in our SC Beginner's Guide, to get to an elite SC score, you’ll have to get pretty good at finding the strict, LITERAL differences in meaning between two or more answer choices.)

I hope that helps!

I would like to know whether we can use two items in a series without any conjunction like in this sentence - separate, required course. It sounds a little awkward.

"I'll refer only GMAC approved study material". Is the sentence correct? If yes, then here a noun follows only.

Hello daagh
In this question, there are two items in a list used without comma. It seems awkward? Please can you help me understand.