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spraying pesticides

by amysky_0205 » Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:37 am
The spraying of pesticides can be carefully planned, but accidents, weather conditions that could not be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had anticipated.

A. weather conditions that could not be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had
B. weather conditions that cannot be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than
C. unforeseeable weather conditions, and pilot errors are the cause of much larger deposits of spray than they had
D. weather conditions that are not foreseeable, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than
E. unforeseeable weather conditions, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had

OA: B

can someone explain this one?

thank u so much!
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by HerrGrau » Thu Jan 31, 2013 10:39 am
Hi Amy,

The spraying of pesticides can be carefully planned, but accidents, weather conditions that could not be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had anticipated.

A. weather conditions that could not be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had Who does they refer to???

B. weather conditions that cannot be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than Looks good

C. unforeseeable weather conditions, and pilot errors are the cause of much larger deposits of spray than they had Who does they refer to???

D. weather conditions that are not foreseeable, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than Very close to B but weather conditions that are not foreseeable is awkward and inferior to weather conditions that cannot be foreseen


E. unforeseeable weather conditions, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had Who does they refer to???

The trick with this one (and many other SCs) is linking back all of the verbs to their subjects and all of the pronouns to their nouns. It is best practice to do that for every single question. That process would have left us with two choices. At that point we were left to compare the quality of the construction.

Does that help?

HG.
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by Tommy Wallach » Fri Feb 01, 2013 2:08 pm
Great take on this from HerrGrau,

One quick thing: Where is this question from? I ask only because usually the GMAT doesn't like to parallel clauses to non clauses. Unfortunately we don't have a choice here:

(B) accidents, weather conditions that cannot be foreseen, and pilot errors
(D) accidents, weather conditions that are not foreseeable, and pilot errors

In both of these examples, the first and third elements of the parallelism are nouns, while the second element is a clause (both have verbs: "cannot" and "are"). If I had my druthers, the correct answer would say:

(B) accidents, unforeseeable weather conditions, and pilot errors

In my experience, the GMAT will usually give you an option such as this one. I'm not totally sure I'd support this question, because I don't see (D) having enough of a problem to make it valid as a wrong answer choice. But hey, when there's nothing perfect, you got to go with the best you have.

Hope that helps!

-t
Tommy Wallach, Company Expert
ManhattanGMAT

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