SticklorForDetails wrote:
I'm not entirely sure I agree. For example, the GMAT does prefer active over passive constructions.
not true, actually.
in the old OG (10th) the passive was woven into a lot of otherwise awkward answers, sure. but, in the most recent OG this is just false: OG 12 has 33 problems in which the student must actually choose between active and passive, and a slight majority of these (17 of 33) are decided in favor of the passive.
The black-and-white grammar rules come first but the style rules are still tested. Furthermore, many test-takers find their ear to be a good first clue, although it needs to be backed up by applying the rules and conventions tested, objectively (as you point out), on the GMAT.
i wholeheartedly agree --
for native speakers. in fact, i just wrote an article for a forthcoming mgmat book in which i explicitly advocate a (limited) use of "ear judgment" for native speakers.
on the other hand, "awkwardness"/"ickyness" is well beyond the ken of the vast majority of non-native speakers, excepting only
those who have read and written the language at very high levels for many years, if not decades. since that description fits very few posters in this forum, it's not fair to advocate "awkwardness" as a criterion.
In a sense we agree that "ickiness" is not a grounds for, well, anything really on the GMAT, but I think it's foolish to deny that "ickiness" exists, that it's often the first thing we notice when reading an SC sentence, and that while this forum's users often demand black-and-white answers, what they really want is a higher score on the GMAT, something which will be better attained by using all of their skills, instincts, and strategies, and not pretending not to notice that a right answer is "icky" even though it's right.
i agree in theory, but that sort of intuition is something that takes years and years of immersion -- not to mention a complete 180-degree shift in learning philosophy (from memorization-based to intuitive). i am totally on board with what you are saying in theory, but we differ in that you seem to believe that such intuition is attainable by students (a) who have not fully absorbed even the fundaments of how english is structured (e.g. many posters who still write questions in the form "Why A is wrong?" after hundreds of posts and (b) who are on a very limited study timeline.
in order to meet the needs of students with such a profile, we must avoid anything that requires advanced and subtle intuition that, to be fair, even a majority of native english speakers don't really have in full.
SC correct answers, unlike those in CR and RC, are only correct in comparison to the other choices, and a great deal of the time, a correct SC answer would have been wrong had their been a different set of possible answers.
if what you are saying is "some error types are relative" -- e.g. modifier placement (like og12 #107) and parallelism -- then yes. however, the vast majority of SC's have four choices that are wrong for objective reasons.
I'm sure you can think of some examples of this, but if not, I could provide some. These are the situations where a test-taker is absolutely correct in calling it "icky" and should not be bullied into ignoring their instincts. I think instead of forcing us to see every correct answer as Absolutely Correct, we should encourage students to be comfortable with the "acceptable-but-icky" category
again, totally on board here, but only in the case of (a) educated native speakers and (b) non-native speakers
who can write the language at a native level, the latter of whom are relatively rare. if someone is posting things like "why A is wrong?" then it is a given that such a person's instincts will be either miscalibrated or not yet developed.
