To be creative... SC question.

StarDust845 · Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 8:33 am Post subject: To be creative... SC question.

(This posting is from http://www.gmatbuster.org)

To be creative, one should try to think of new ideas that germinate faster in the loose soil of soft thinking, which finds similarities and connections among different things or situations.

A. that germinate faster in the loose soil of soft thinking
B. which germinates faster in the loose soil than soft thinking
C. which will germinate fastest in the lose soil of soft thinking
D. that faster germinates on the loose soil of soft thought
E. which must germinate faster in the lost soil of soft thinking

I have two questions.
1) ... of new ideas that germinate ...
Is "that" appropriate here? Can "that" be used for plural items?

2) ... of soft thinking, which finds similarities ..
What does "which" point to? The new ideas or "creative"?

I think I am confused in general about this question.

Calista.

Danielle · Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 11:12 am Post subject:

1) "That" can be used for plural items, and it is appropriate in this case. Which would be appropriate if trying to express a particular subset of new ideas, whereas this clause is added additional information applicable to ALL new ideas.

2) In this sentence which refers to "soft thinking", or the strategy of finding connections between different things or solutions. It's a dependent clause explaining the concept of what soft thinking is.

What is the OA? The way that I'm reading this (and it's a tricky one because to me the communicative idea of the sentence is vague) the OA is A.

Stuart Kovinsky · Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 11:58 am Post subject:

(A) is definitely correct and this question is pretty quick to solve if you just focus on that vs which.

On the GMAT, we only see "which" in parenthetical comments (i.e. between commas or in parentheses, the latter of which is very rare) or used in a prepositional phrase (e.g. "in which", "at which", during which", ...). Outside of prepositional phrases, "which" pretty much never appears in the main part of a sentence.

So, we definitely need "that" after "new ideas". We quickly eliminate all the choices except (A) and (D)

(D) sounds ugly and has a subject-verb agreement issue (new ideas... germinates), so we can eliminate it.

Therefore, (A) must be correct.

Focusing on differences among the choices (e.g. here we have to choose between "that" and "which") is a great way of dealing with trickier sentences, because we often end up ignoring the trickier bits.

StarDust845 · Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:34 pm Post subject:

Thanks both of you. It is much clearer now. OA is A.

Danielle · Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 3:07 pm Post subject:

Thanks Stuart -- your up to date knowledge of GMAT question patterns is a real plus! Looking forward to learning more from your comments in the future.

jaiswaln · Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:17 am Post subject:

A general rule of thumb to substitute which/that when two which or that appears in the original question or the choices is to look for one which has one which and other as that. This is done inorder to maintain clarity when essential and non essential modifier of least importance. ..

From Manhattan GMAT......

To find my house, walk down the left side of the street until you reach the third house, which is red.

To find my house, walk down the left side of the street until you reach the third house that is red.

Both the sentences above are correct although they have different meanings.

Additionally, the word which can be removed from the sentence withoug loss of essential meaning.

StarDust845 · Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:54 am Post subject:

sankruth · Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 2:51 am Post subject:

Heres how I arrived at the corect choice. Please let me know if my approach is correct.

All choices start with "which" or "that", so it refers to the noun that precedes it i.e. ideas. So plural germinate must be used instead of germinates. That eliminates B and D.

C and E change the meaning using 'will' and 'must', which leaves us with A.

Is this a correct approach?