Sentence Correction

Antarctica receives more solar radiation than does any other place on Earth, yet the temperatures are so cold and the ice cap is reflective, so that little polar ice melts during the summer; otherwise, the water levels of the oceans would rise 250 feet and engulf most of the world’s great cities.
A. is reflective, so that little polar ice melts during the summer; otherwise,
B. is so reflective that little of the polar ice melts during the summer; were it to do so,
C. so reflective that little polar ice melts during the summer, or else
D. reflective, so that little of the polar ice melts during the summer, or
E. reflects so that little of the polar ice melts during the summer; if it did

The answer is B. This is testing parallelism again. The 'so cold' must be paralleled by 'so reflective'. "Or else" and otherwise are interchangeable.


** Tip: If you catch the lack of parallelism in the example sentence, you can use process of elimination to narrow the answer down to either answer choice B or C. B is wrong because it is not concise and the 'were it to do so' phrase has an ambiguous pronoun reference in it. What is 'it' referring to? They mean to say 'were the polar ice caps to fully melt', but it's not saying that at all**

Danielle wrote:The answer is B. This is testing parallelism again. The 'so cold' must be paralleled by 'so reflective'. "Or else" and otherwise are interchangeable.


** Tip: If you catch the lack of parallelism in the example sentence, you can use process of elimination to narrow the answer down to either answer choice B or C. B is wrong because it is not concise and the 'were it to do so' phrase has an ambiguous pronoun reference in it. What is 'it' referring to? They mean to say 'were the polar ice caps to fully melt', but it's not saying that at all**

you mean to say the right answer is C ? or b ?

Sorry. Typo, the answer is B.

C is wrong since 'little' seems to modify the 'polar ice', which is not the case.