Breaking Down a Long GMATPrep SC Problem
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Stacey is a GMAT Instructor living in Montreal. Click here to read more articles from Manhattan GMAT and to learn more about Manhattan GMAT's classes. |
Last week, we started discussing what to do when faced with Sentence Correction problems containing very long underlines and a “jumble” in the answer choices. Click here for the first half of our discussion on this topic. (Note: click here to read about the general process of attacking Sentence Correction questions; the techniques we discuss in this current article are to be used only when necessary.)
Many sentence correction questions can easily be scanned vertically, in order to find differences among the answers. But some problems instead move major parts of the sentence around, or change the basic structure (an independent clause becomes dependent and vice versa, for instance). If you’re a ManhattanGMAT student, we would classify these kinds of questions as ones for which the “splits” are more challenging to identify.
Here’s today’s GMATPrep® problem; set your timer for 1 minute and 15 seconds and go!
The government predicts that, for consumers and businesses that make a large number of long-distance calls, the Federal Communications Commission’s recent telephone rate cuts will greatly reduce costs, though some consumer groups disagree with the government’s estimates, suggesting they are too optimistic.
(A) The government predicts that, for consumers and businesses that make a large number of long-distance calls, the Federal Communications Commission’s recent telephone rate cuts will greatly reduce costs
(B) The government predicts that costs will be greatly reduced for consumers and businesses that make a large number of long-distance calls by the Federal Communications Commission’s recent telephone rate cuts
(C) The government’s prediction is, for consumers and businesses making a large number of long-distance calls, costs will be greatly reduced by the recent telephone rate cuts made by the Federal Communications Commission
(D) For consumers and businesses that make a large number of long-distance calls, the government’s prediction that the Federal Communications Commission’s recent telephone rate cuts will greatly reduce costs
(E) For consumers and businesses making a large number of long-distance calls, the government predicts that the recent telephone rate cuts that the Federal Communications Commission has made will greatly reduce costs”
[Note to those who answered the problem within the allotted time frame and thought it wasn’t too hard. Did you read the answer choices horizontally? Or did you compare choices vertically? You may be able to get away with a horizontal strategy for this problem, but if you want to get better, then you need to learn the vertical strategy for harder problems. If this problem was easier for you, don’t dismiss it. Use it to learn how to tackle harder problems. (And use this principle in general: easier problems are VERY good for learning how to tackle harder problems.)]
Okay, are you ready to jump in? What did you think when you read the original sentence?
The first thing I noticed was that the underline is quite long. That’s a really good clue that I might have one of these sentences where the “splits” (or differences in the answer choices) might be less obvious. It’s more likely that big chunks of the sentence will move around, and the form of different pieces may change more substantially than usual. Basically, the longer the underline, the more likely these types of things are to happen.
The government predicts that, for <a certain group>, the <long modifier> rate cuts will reduce costs, though some groups disagree, <-ing modifier>.
The independent clause is one of the more complex structures: Subject Verb THAT Subject Verb Object.
The government predicts that the rate cuts will reduce costs.
A prepositional phrase (“for…”) set off by commas interrupts the independent clause. If something is going to get picked up and moved around in the answers, that’s a good candidate.
There’s also a long adjectival modifier describing the rate cuts: they’re “owned” by the Federal Communications Commission (that is, the FCC was responsible for them) and they occurred recently.
More simply, we’ve got:
Start of independent clause, modifier, rest of independent clause, dependent clause (introducing a contrast), modifier
The commas above correspond to the commas in the original sentence.
As we discussed in the first half of this 2-part article, it is far better to compare answers vertically than to read each answer choice horizontally. Your goal is always to find the best answer of the five; finding the best of something is by definition a comparison. On the problems we’re examining in this series, the comparisons are not as straightforward as they are on many problems.
So how do we still use this technique when the splits, or differences, aren’t as straightforward? We break the sentence into major parts – that’s why I simplified our original sentence, above.
Where are those parts in the various answer choices? Answer choice A is always the same as the original, of course. What about the others? (The commas represent the actual commas found in the sentences.)
A: start of independent clause, modifier, rest of independent clause
B: independent clause with a “that” modifier embedded (“that make…”)
C: start of independent clause), modifier, hmm… more of the independent clause? A new independent clause?
D: opening modifier, subject (with embedded “that” modifier: “that the FCC…”)
E: opening modifier, independent clause (with embedded “that” modifier: “that the FCC has made”)
In practice, I would start just with the independent clause in each choice, ignoring the rest of the sentence. Is each independent clause okay?
So, let’s see. Answer D seems to be missing an independent clause. That’s not good – every sentence has to have an independent clause or it’s not a sentence in the first place. Let’s check that one again:
“For consumers…” Okay, that’s just a modifier.
“the prediction that <something is true>” There’s a subject (prediction) but no verb to go with it (only the “that <something is true>” modifier has a verb).
The rest of the sentence is the non-underlined stuff, and we already decided that that part consisted of a dependent clause and a modifier. So, we don’t have a complete sentence. “Prediction” could be the main noun, but it has no verb! Eliminate D.
I also stumbled a little bit when trying to describe answer C’s independent clause:
“The government’s prediction is costs will be greatly reduced…”
I predict that costs will be greatly reduced…
I predict costs will be greatly reduced…
What’s the difference? Can I skip the word “that” in this sentence?
Turns out I cannot! Not in the above structure. If I want to predict something simple I can – let’s say that I want to convey the idea that things will be chaotic when the GMAT switches to the new version of the exam in 2012. I might say, “I predict chaos!” I wouldn’t say “I predict that chaos.” Why not?
We reserve the “that” structure for situations in which we want to predict something more complete. I predict that you will all study hard tonight. I predict that there will be lots of chaos when the GMAT switches to the new exam in 2012. I predict that costs will be greatly reduced…
All of those are more complex thoughts – we’re predicting things that go beyond just a single word – we’re predicting entire situations. For that, we need “that.” Eliminate C.
What else have we got? The original sentence contains the modifier “for consumers and businesses that make a large number of long-distance calls.” Where is that info in B and E? In choice B, the modifier isn’t set off from the main sentence. What difference does that make? Choice E places the modifier at the beginning of the sentence, also set off from the rest of the sentence by a comma. Does moving the modifier to the front change anything?
Modifiers refer to some other part of the sentence, so we have to make sure that they’re placed in such a way that they modify the correct thing. The word “for” is a preposition, so we’re dealing with a prepositional phrase modifier. When a prepositional phrase modifier is set off by commas, it is typically functioning as an adverbial modifier – that is, it is referring to some action in the sentence, as represented by a verb (the action). The modifier does not have to be placed right next to the verb, but it does have to be placed in such a way that it is clear which verb the modifier is “attached” to – that is, we don’t want to introduce confusion by placing the adverbial modifier too close to some other verb or action.
So what is happening “for (certain) consumers and businesses?” The rate cuts will reduce costs for these people and companies. The relevant action is “reduce costs.”
A and E both use commas to set off the prepositional phrase. In A, the prepositional phrase comes just before the clause that includes the verb “reduce,” so the placement in A is fine.
In E, the prepositional phrase comes just before “the government predicts.” That is one action: the government is predicting something. Is the government making this prediction for or on behalf of the consumers and businesses? No, that’s the wrong action. Rather, the government is predicting some other action – that costs will be reduced for consumers and businesses. The placement of the modifier in E is incorrect. Eliminate E.
What about choice B? The modifier comes immediately after “will be greatly reduced.” The placement here looks fine – the costs will be reduced for these groups. That meaning is correct.
We’re down to A and B. What else can we compare? Interesting. The opening part of B (“The government predicts that costs will be greatly reduced…”) sounds so much better than the opening part of A that it makes me wonder about the end of choice B. On really long choices, I’ve seen them do this before: the opening part sounds better but then something falls apart towards the end of that choice. If I’m not paying enough attention, I might not spot it, and they’ve just gotten me to fall into a trap. So I’m going to examine the end of B.
Let’s see: costs will be greatly reduced for <certain groups> that <have a certain characteristic> by <the thing that’s reducing the costs>
That last bit is problematic. The verb is in the passive voice (“costs will be reduced”). With passive voice, the subject is not the thing making the action happen. Rather, something else is (often, but not always, introduced using the preposition “by”). So the “by” preposition at the end is telling us who or what is responsible for reducing the costs. For example: “I ate the pizza” (active) or “The pizza was eaten by me” (passive).
As a general rule, we prefer active voice to passive voice. We can see active voice in choice A: “the rate cuts will greatly reduce costs.” The subject (rate cuts) is responsible for the action. So this is one reason to prefer A over B, but I’m going to take it a little further. The word “by” is a preposition and introduces a prepositional phrase. When a preposition immediately follows a noun with no comma between them, the default assumption is that the prepositional phrase refers to that noun. It doesn’t always have to 100% of the time, but that is the most likely scenario.
Is that accurate here? Does “by the Federal Communications Commission’s recent telephone rate cuts” modify “long-distance calls?”
No. I might say “I make a large number of long-distance calls by Skype” or “by satellite phone.” But I don’t make a large number of long-distance calls by rate cuts. The fact that the sentence can initially be read in this nonsensical way introduces an ambiguity and the GMAT doesn’t like ambiguity. Now we have two reasons to prefer A over B, and that’s definitely enough to pick A and move on!
The correct answer is A.
Key Takeaways for Long Underlines + Jumbled Sentences on SC:
(1) Long-underline sentences are more likely to be “jumbled” – that is, to move big chunks of the sentence around and even to change what information is located in the dependent vs. independent clauses. When you see this happening, break the sentence down into those chunks (commas are often great natural separators) and figure out the role of each chunk.
(2) When you use the “chunk” strategy, you will often start in one of two places: either start with the first chunk of the original sentence and go find the location of that chunk in subsequent answer choices, or start with the independent clause in each answer choice, wherever that might be. The more complicated the sentence, the more likely you are to concentrate on the independent clause first.
(3) These kinds of sentences also typically test the placement of the chunks – is the modifier or other “extra” info in the right place relative to the other pieces of information? In this case, we were able to eliminate some choices because the modifiers were placed incorrectly relative to the other words in the sentence.
* GMATPrep® question courtesy of the Graduate Management Admissions Council. Usage of this question does not imply endorsement by GMAC.
20 comments
Ravi on March 16th, 2011 at 6:06 am
Thanks for the detailed analysis Stacey. I finished with 3 seconds to spare but fell for B. I didn't notice the later part at all. I compared the first part and thought this is the right one. Now I know, I have to look for those Traps. COuld you please let me know the difficulty level of this question. Thank you
Stacey Koprince on March 16th, 2011 at 6:36 am
I have to guess, of course, because they don't release that data. I would guess that the 'tipping point' for this question (meaning, the level at which someone would become more likely to get it right than wrong) is probably somewhere between the 80th and 90th percentiles.
If any other experts happen to be reading this and would like to weigh in, please do so. Guessing difficulty levels is definitely an art.
RG on March 19th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Stacey,
Another great article and thorough explanation. I am for some reason not able to eliminate answer choice E because of modifier issue. However, I think answer choice A is better because choice E sounds awkward.
Also from your explanation - "In E, the prepositional phrase comes just before “the government predicts.” That is one action: the government is predicting something. Is the government making this prediction for or on behalf of the consumers and businesses? No, that’s the wrong action. Rather, the government is predicting some other action – that costs will be reduced for consumers and businesses." - can I not justify answer choice E by saying that the government is predicting something for the consumers and businesses that make large number of long distance calls? Is this not similar to answer choice A?
Can you please provide couple of examples so that I can understand this concept better.
Thanks in advance
Stacey Koprince on March 19th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
That last bit is tricky. It's really about intent. Did the government say: hey, we need to make a prediction for the consumers! Hmm, what should we predict?
Not according to the original sentence (which is the meaning we must maintain). The actual prediction was:
Government: we predict that the rate cuts will reduce costs.
That's the basic prediction. The other stuff is just extra info. For whom will those costs go down? For the consumers. The action that applies to the consumers = the costs will go down (for them).
Think about this:
For my students in class A, I predict that my students in class B will score well on the GMAT.
Here, I am making a prediction for my students in class A. What I'm actually predicting has to do with a different group of students though.
Pick that "for" phrase up and move it around. Does it still make sense?
I predict that my students in class B will score well on the GMAT for my students in class A.
or
I predict that, for my students in class A, my students in class B will score well on the GMAT.
Er. What does that mean? Picking that "for" phrase up and moving it around makes it modify different things. In the first example, I'm telling you that I'm making a prediction on behalf of (for) my students in class A, but what I'm predicting doesn't actually affect them. This example is correct, because I'm making a prediction during their class but the prediction is about my other class.
In the next two examples... well, those aren't correct because they don't make logical sense. The first bad example doesn't have a comma, so the prepositional phrase beginning with "for" should apply to the preceding noun "GMAT." The GMAT is "for" the students in class A?
The second bad example does have a comma, so it modifies the clause that it's attached to - that clause is "my students in class B will score well on the GMAT." So this says that the fact that the students in class B will score well is "for" the students in class A.
It's tricky in the above because you can think "well, the consumers are hearing the prediction, so you can logically say that the government is making the prediction for the consumers." If you want to write a sentence that conveys that meaning, that's possible. But you're required to maintain the GMAT's meaning. And the GMAT is attaching the "for the consumers" to the second action (rate cuts will reduce costs), not the first action (government predicts). So you've got to maintain that meaning.
RG on March 20th, 2011 at 8:24 pm
Stacey,
Wow! Great explanation as usual. It makes perfect sense now. Thank you for your time.
Thanks
duongthang on January 9th, 2012 at 6:59 am
Thank you for wonderful article. I wish you to do the following.
In your explanation, you said that you can start
with the first chunk of original sentence
or
with the independent clause.
I wish you to make 2 breakdowns like above, one breakdown you do with the first chunk of the original sentence, the other you do with the independent clause.
I wish to see step by step process of your thought.
you make many nice articles in CR and SC and I am going to read your articles in RC.
duongthang on January 9th, 2012 at 7:34 am
pls, ignore my question above.
in your breakdown, your first focus in on main clause. Your second focus in on the phrase " for customers and business...". Your third focus is on phrase "by federal cut..."
for every question of this kind. we need 2 or 3 focuses to do. Is that right?
Stacey Koprince on January 12th, 2012 at 7:57 am
You'd only use this technique when you have a really complicated / convoluted sentence (because it takes too long to use on every sentence), so yes, you're likely going to end up having to focus in on several different parts in order to get to the answer.
It's also the case that it's rare to get to the answer based on just one issue - that usually only happens if the underline is pretty short. Otherwise, we're going to have to assess at least two, and possible more, differences in order to get down to one answer.
Stacey Koprince on January 12th, 2012 at 7:58 am
p.s. I just submitted a new SC article that I think is being published today - another one with long underlines, modifiers, and meaning issues. Check it out!
duongthang on May 22nd, 2012 at 6:37 pm
Great. Thank you, Stacey. I have one problem related to this articles.
I am non native.
The first thing I do is to read the entire original sentence. If after reading the original sentence, I understand the meaning/intent of the problem, I can find the mechanical grammartical errors and logic errors easily. But, the problem to me is that for many SC questions, after reading the original sentence and even after reading many first answer choices, I can not understand the meaning/intent of the sentence. Many cases, I can only understand the meaning/intent when I read choice E. Because When I read choices A,B,C and D , I do not understand the meaning/intent, I can find only the mechanical grammar errors. I can not find out logic errors at this step.
what I should do if after reading the original sentence and the first 3 answer choices, I understand nothing.? do you have any solution for this step.
in your breakdown, I do not know when you realize the meaning/intent of the sentence. I see you eliminate the mechanical grammar errors, eliminate choice C, first.
if after reading the original sentence, I realize the meaning/error , I can find the errors VERY EASILY.
if the alll or most of SC sentence is underlined, I meet the problem above. after reading the original and a few first answer choices, I do not understand the meaning and can only eliminate the mechanical grammar errors. Undertanding the intent/meaning is key to find logic errors and go to the correct answer. But it is hard to realize the meaning/intent when the sentence is complex and distorted. The problem you break down is one of the example.
after we eliminate the mechanical errors, HOW DO WE REALIZE THE MEANING/INTENT ?. PLEASE, DETAIL THIS PROCESS for all underlined questions or normal questions. please help. Thank you, Stacey.
Stacey Koprince on June 9th, 2012 at 7:03 am
You're not the only one - there are times when I read the original sentence and I also think: What? What are they actually trying to say?
First, that indicates that there's likely a meaning error in the original sentence - something is illogical or ambiguous. (Usually ambiguous. When I read something illogical, I usually think, "You can't say blah blah blah. That's wrong." When I read something ambiguous, I usually think, "Huh? I don't even understand what they want to say."
Next, ask yourself: which part specifically doesn't make sense? Usually, there are parts of the sentence that are fine, and you can point to a certain sequence of words and say, "Here's where they lost me."
Okay, go glance at the answers _in_that_area_ and look for one that has substantially different wording. Now, plug that answer back into the original full sentence and read through. (NOTE: do NOT do this in general on all SC questions. It takes way too long!)
Understand the meaning now? Great, deal with it. Don't understand the meaning now? Figure out some other way to eliminate some answers, then pick and move on without losing time on this one. DO NOT skip this step before you do what I describe below - make yourself pick an answer. (You're going to hit some on the real test where the same thing happens. If you don't practice cutting yourself off and picking an answer, you won't do it on the real test either. Then you'll lose time and possibly mess up your verbal section.)
Afterwards, go back and study. Take all the time you want to try the different answers in the original sentence. Do any make more sense? Which ones? Why? Was there any way that you might have been able to tell that the first time you were deciding which other answer choice to substitute into the original sentence? Could you have answered more precisely the question: which part of the original sentence is confusing? Would that have helped lead you to a more useful answer choice?
Now that you have all the time in the world, what is the difference between the original and the correct answer? HOW did they manage to mess up the meaning so badly that we didn't even know what they were talking about? Sometimes you can learn how to anticipate what the issue might be even when you don't know what they're talking about. If you can know, oh, this language right here is the part that doesn't make sense, and that part is a modifier put I don't know what it's modifying, or a verb tense that's funny because it seems to be mixing up the logical timeline, or whatever - then you have some ideas about what would be necessary in order to fix that.
"what I should do if after reading the original sentence and the first 3 answer choices, I understand nothing.?"
While the clock is running, pick something and move on. You're not going to get everything right and you shouldn't expect to. Sometimes you just have to let go. Afterwards, what I described above.
You mention that, in the article, I don't mention when I knew the meaning / intent of the sentence - yes, that's true. This article was written before they told us that they were emphasizing meaning. I just went back and read the original sentence and I (personally) can understand the meaning from the original sentence on this one.
What I'd suggest is that you go and look for some of my articles that deal specifically with meaning. Look through the BTG archive of MGMAT posts:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/manhattan-gmat
Start looking in Sep or Oct of last year - the conference where they announced the meaning issue was in Sep of 2011. I wrote multiple articles on meaning after that, with most of them clustered in the several months after the conference.
vikram on June 20th, 2012 at 5:03 am
regarding "consumers and businesses that" in option A. I thought "that" is a problem since it cannot refer to "consumers". But since A is correct, i forced myself to think what could be possible explanation. Is this issue similar to "either.. or.." construction in the sense that subject after "OR" is taken into account for "verb" agreement.
In that case, "businesses and consumers WHO" would be correct... am i correct
vikram on June 20th, 2012 at 5:18 am
In addition to above query, i would like to ask how can i improve in identifying such splits. I so look for meaning but this was beyond me. Ever after your explanation, i took an hour to really grab the difference in meaning
P.S. I am non-native
Stacey Koprince on July 3rd, 2012 at 6:27 am
Yes, that's a good way to think about it - in general, we're supposed to use "who" for people and "that" for non-people, but in this case we've got a "mixed pair." So we use the word that matches with the closest word (in this case, businesses).
I will also say, though, that there are cases where it's fine to say "consumers that" (though we generally prefer who) but I can't think of an instance in which we'd say "businesses who" - so you could make an argument for "businesses and consumers that..."
And so I don't think they'd make you make that particular choice on this test.
Re: your second question, there are going to be times that a question is just too hard - it happens to everyone. So there are going to be times that you just have to say, "Oh, well, they got me on that one."
Of course, after you're done working on the question set, you do want to try to go back and understand - but if it took an hour to really get it on this one, then that's the point at which you ask yourself a different question: How can I acknowledge to myself more quickly that this one's just too hard, and is there a reasonable way I can still get rid of some of the wrong answer choices anyway, even though I don't 100% get it?
In the meantime, you can do a *lot* of reading from complex sources from now on for the rest of your life, and you'll also slowly get better at understanding very complex sentences. A sentence like that is very difficult for anyone, but especially so for a non-native speaker.
Patanjali on August 6th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Hi Stacey, Thanks for writing such articles. It helps a lot (esp your writing style is a true reflection of how one would think while solving the problem). I have a doubt - in this article you have mentioned that "When a prepositional phrase modifier is set off by commas, it is typically functioning as an adverbial modifier – that is, it is referring to some action in the sentence, as represented by a verb (the action)". But I have read one of your posts (http://www.beatthegmat.com/defense-attorneys-have-occasionally-argued-that-their-client-t10501-15.html) in which you have mentioned that {The "in attributing" modifier is an adverbial modifier, not a noun modifier, but it's a bit unusual in that it comes BEFORE what it's modifying, not after. The same rule applies though: the modifier should apply to the subject and verb. Also, because we have "IN attributing..." before, the subject should be the same thing that's performing the action of "attributing."}. Why in this problem you say prep ph should modify SUBJECT and VERB (not just VERB), and why do we need SUBJECT immediately after comma in the PERPETRATORS problem (unlike the problem of TELEPHONE RATE CUTS)? Is it something to do with FOR prep phrase (in which we need FOR prep ph to modify VERB) and IN prep ph (to modify both SUBJECT and verb)? Pls advice.
Stacey Koprince on August 6th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
As a general rule, an adverbial modifier modifies the clause to which it's attached, which you can think of as the subject and verb of that clause. The subject and verb together tell us the entirety of the action being performed - what it is and who's doing it.
Sometimes people talk of it as just the verb because, at heart, the verb alone does tell us the basic action, and that also easily distinguishes from a noun modifier, which refers to a noun only, never a verb - and it's fine to think of it that way. But really we are talking about the clause, which is the full subject-verb pairing.
If the modifier is also an opening modifier (ie, it comes at the beginning of the sentence), then we generally expect the subject part of the clause to come right after that comma in order to minimize any confusion about what the modifier is referring to. This happens whether you are dealing with a noun or an adverbial modifier.
Gmat_win on September 12th, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Hi Stacey,
First of all Thanks for your excellent and deep dive analysis. My doubt is this :
The govt predicts ( Subject -government , Predicts - verb)
for consumers and businesses that make a large number of long-distance calls - adverbial modifier
the Federal communication's recent telephone rate cuts will greatly reduce costs - rate cuts - Subject , will reduce - verb
though....estimates - dependant clause
suggestin-- modifier.
So you have specified that
Start of independent clause, modifier, rest of independent clause, dependent clause (introducing a contrast), modifier
But we have the govt predicts that X
The govt predicts has its own subject and verb and X has its own subject and verb so "that" acts as a connector of two clauses right?
I'm not able to see how the whole stuff is a single independent clause.
Please clarify. I know this is basic but it kind of helps me getting clarity.
Thank you.
Stacey Koprince on September 17th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
The word "that" can function in multiple ways. One of those ways is kind of a "reset" button on a sentence, allowing us to introduce another subject and verb. For example:
I think that studying for the GMAT is fun.
I think = subj verb pair #1
that = reset button
studying is = subj verb pair #2
Collectively, the core of the sentence is:
I think that studying is fun.
And there are indeed two subjects and two verbs here - it isn't the case that one is subordinate to the other or that one is a modifier or anything like that.
For the "big" sentence we have in the problem above, we have:
The government predicts that the rate cuts will reduce costs.
The other things all "hang" on the sentence in various ways (modifiers, subordinate clauses, etc.).
Gmat_win on September 12th, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Also stacey , if you can just let me know which question of the adverb would the adverbial modifier answer?
How--how did i reduce cost -No
when-- when did reduce cost -no
where- where di reduce cost - no
why-why did <for... reduce cost - no
I;m confused,
Stacey Koprince on September 17th, 2012 at 3:45 pm
This modifier is talking about for WHOM the rate cuts will greatly reduce costs.
Notice that the modifier is placed after the "that" - so it's closer to the 2nd subj-verb pairing. Who will have greatly reduced costs? Consumers and businesses that make a large number of long-distance calls.