Sentence Correction

Hi,

Answer is certainly C.

I am not sure whether I have any chance to win a prize today as already others have explained the answer in detail and now anyone can just make up explaination by reading through answers given by other.

But honestly without getting into details given by others, if I have to explain why I choose C, I would say because....


..... it clearly compares APPLES with APPLES. The sentence should be Logically parallel i.e it must compare logically comparable things.

Here, Logically comparable things are Single-Payer Health insurance and employer provided Health insurance.

Hence , C.

Move to next question quickly....

I hope I'm still posting this before the dead line

As all of you, I am also of the opinion that C displays the best answer choice. Apparently, the easiest way to determine that is by examining the "comparison issue", which has already been done by many of you. To make this post not completely redundant, though, I want to focus on other mistakes that the wrong answer choices contain.

(A) employers are largely depended on in the American healthcare system to provide health insurance

When I first read this, I thought the word "depended" was a typo and should have been "dependent". But I figured that no good question writer would make such a sloppy mistake, so I read again and discovered that this sentence actually makes use of the passive voice, which is definitely unnecessary.

Apart from that, the word order seems confusing as well. The injected "in the American healthcare system" breaks the flow and actually separates two parts that belong together. The sentence should have read "employers are depended on to provide health insurance" with "in the American healthcare system" either at the beginning or end of the underlined part.

(B) to provide health insurance in the American system, people largely depend on their employers

Apart from the faulty comparison, this sentence changes the intended meaning. It actually says, that it is the people who provide health insurance, which is clearly wrong. The people don't provide anything, their employers do.

(C) the American healthcare system is largely dependent on employer-provided health insurance

This is the correct answer, so no trouble here. The sentence is, concise, elegant, and grammatically correct.

(D) the American healthcare system's foundation is employer-provided health insurance

This sentence elegantly solves the problem of who provides health insurance. However, "healthcare system's foundation" sounds awkward. The American healthcare system does not actually "possess" its own foundation. It should therefore read: "the foundation of the American healthcare system". Admittedly, the faulty comparison is by far the biggest reason to eliminate this answer choice.

(E) employer-provided health insurance, upon which the American system depends

Using this option, all we get is a fragment and not a full sentence. When reading "Unlike [...], employer-provided health insurance, upon which the American system depends" we should ask: does what? "upon which the American system depends" is a relative clause. In each sentence, all relative clauses can be left out and the main clause (s) still constitute a grammatically correct sentence. If we take out the relative clauses here, though, we get: "Unlike a single-payer health insurance system, employer-provided health insurance". Not a sentence!

Great job, everybody! The correct answer was, as everybody saw, (C). Although everybody got it right, I'm picking the best explanation as the one that properly identified the issue in each of the 5 answer choices. Yes, there are other errors besides the Comparison error, especially in (E), but from a GMAT strategy perspective, you should never have even noticed these, because you should have simply identified the comparison error (given away because the very first word is "unlike"!), scanned for a choice or choices that fixed this error, and as soon as you found there was only one, selected (C) and moved on. In that sense, I want to give shout-outs (honorable mention?) to prachich, target, lilisanei, and rajeevw, who kept their explanations super-simple and to-the-point.

However, the truly best explanation, while being just as simple as it needs to be (as rajeevw put it above, "C. Move to next question quickly....", which is exactly the right approach on test day!), also gives a quick run-down of why there were, in fact, errors in all of the 5 choices. Notice how this explanation highlights the key terms in each choice so as to be sure that there is, in fact, a Comparison error in A, B, D, and E. Comparing these terms to each other and ignoring the rest of the sentence is how to quickly address all 5 choices and move on with confidence.

And the winner is...hja379! (explanation below)

Stay tuned for tomorrow's question. I know this one was kind of easy, but I promise, the next 3 in our continuing Knewton Verbal Challenge Week are HARD, so they should be fun. See you around the BTG forums, and see if you can be a winner tomorrow!

hja379 wrote:

AdamKnewton wrote:Hey everyone,

--

Question 2.

Unlike a single-payer health insurance system, in which the government or a government-related source pays for all services using a single pool of money, employers are largely depended on in the American healthcare system to provide health insurance.

(A) employers are largely depended on in the American healthcare system to provide health insurance
(B) to provide health insurance in the American system, people largely depend on their employers
(C) the American healthcare system is largely dependent on employer-provided health insurance
(D) the American healthcare system's foundation is employer-provided health insurance
(E) employer-provided health insurance, upon which the American system depends

This question is testing "Parallelism". Unlike X, Y. The elements X and Y must be similar in structure. You can safely ignore " in which the government or a government-related source pays for all services using a single pool of money" which is just a modifier of "single-payer health insurance system"
Explanation:
(A) - Incorrect. Compares "health insurance system" with "employers".
(B) - Incorrect. "health insurance system" and "to provide ...." are not parallel.
(C) - Correct. Compares "health insurance system" with "American healthcare system"
(D) - Incorrect. Wrong comparison. Compares "health insurance system" with "...system's foundation". Watch out for the possessive here (system's).
(E) - Incorrect. Compares "...insurance system" with "...insurance" (instead of another system).

Also, a big Thanks to jaymw above, who has thoroughly explored the answer choices for all interesting SC issues and done a wonderful job at that! Good reading for anyone who just likes to think about GMAT Sentence Correction (which, here at BTG, is, um, all of us? )

AdamKnewton wrote:Great job, everybody! The correct answer was, as everybody saw, (C). Although everybody got it right, I'm picking the best explanation as the one that properly identified the issue in each of the 5 answer choices. Yes, there are other errors besides the Comparison error, especially in (E), but from a GMAT strategy perspective, you should never have even noticed these, because you should have simply identified the comparison error (given away because the very first word is "unlike"!), scanned for a choice or choices that fixed this error, and as soon as you found there was only one, selected (C) and moved on. In that sense, I want to give shout-outs (honorable mention?) to prachich, target, lilisanei, and rajeevw, who kept their explanations super-simple and to-the-point.

However, the truly best explanation, while being just as simple as it needs to be (as rajeevw put it above, "C. Move to next question quickly....", which is exactly the right approach on test day!), also gives a quick run-down of why there were, in fact, errors in all of the 5 choices. Notice how this explanation highlights the key terms in each choice so as to be sure that there is, in fact, a Comparison error in A, B, D, and E. Comparing these terms to each other and ignoring the rest of the sentence is how to quickly address all 5 choices and move on with confidence.

And the winner is...hja379! (explanation below)

Stay tuned for tomorrow's question. I know this one was kind of easy, but I promise, the next 3 in our continuing Knewton Verbal Challenge Week are HARD, so they should be fun. See you around the BTG forums, and see if you can be a winner tomorrow!

hja379 wrote:

AdamKnewton wrote:Hey everyone,

--

Question 2.

Unlike a single-payer health insurance system, in which the government or a government-related source pays for all services using a single pool of money, employers are largely depended on in the American healthcare system to provide health insurance.

(A) employers are largely depended on in the American healthcare system to provide health insurance
(B) to provide health insurance in the American system, people largely depend on their employers
(C) the American healthcare system is largely dependent on employer-provided health insurance
(D) the American healthcare system's foundation is employer-provided health insurance
(E) employer-provided health insurance, upon which the American system depends

This question is testing "Parallelism". Unlike X, Y. The elements X and Y must be similar in structure. You can safely ignore " in which the government or a government-related source pays for all services using a single pool of money" which is just a modifier of "single-payer health insurance system"
Explanation:
(A) - Incorrect. Compares "health insurance system" with "employers".
(B) - Incorrect. "health insurance system" and "to provide ...." are not parallel.
(C) - Correct. Compares "health insurance system" with "American healthcare system"
(D) - Incorrect. Wrong comparison. Compares "health insurance system" with "...system's foundation". Watch out for the possessive here (system's).
(E) - Incorrect. Compares "...insurance system" with "...insurance" (instead of another system).

Thank you very much Adam.