GMAT Sentence Correction: Spot the Trap! - Part 1
If youre a non-native English speaker, you know that youll need to be extra careful with idioms and other constructions that native speakers just know. If youre a native speaker, though, dont think that you have a huge advantage! The GMAT test writers know the kinds of common errors that have crept into spoken language, and theyre going to try to trap you, too!
Note: if youre interested, take a look at our recommended Sentence Correction Process before you try the SC problem below.
All right, are you ready? This SC problem is from the free GMATPrep practice problem set. When youre done, well talk about how to spot the GMAT traps and get these questions right!
* If the proposed expenditures for gathering information abroad are reduced even further, international news reports have been and will continue to diminish in number and quality.(A) have been and will continue to diminish
(B) have and will continue to diminish
(C) will continue to diminish, as they already did,
(D) will continue to diminish, as they have already,
(E) will continue to diminish
The First Glance showed a significant difference: have vs. will. Somethings going on with verb tense hereand that means something is going on with meaning in general, since verb tense is really all about conveying the proper meaning. When do these actions take place?
Next, I read the original sentence and it sounded okay to me. So I dove into the grammar a little more carefully. The underlined portion contains an and and I know what that means: parallelism. So what needs to be parallel here?
reports have been and will continue to diminish
So far, so good. Weve got two verbs. Its fine to make two verbs of different tenses parallel.
There is one problem, though. The parallel portions each have to create their own independent sentence. Consider these examples:
(1) Stan is studying and will call you back later. (Correct)
(2) Stan was and is studying. (Correctthough kind of clunky)
(3) Stan has been and will study. (Incorrect)
Whats wrong with that third one?
(1) Stan is studying. Stan will call you back later.
(2) Stan was studying. Stan is studying.
(3) Stan has been study. (???) Stan will study.
Whoops. When I try to split the two parallel parts into separate sentences, my third example doesnt work. I cant say Stan has been study. It should be Stan has been studying.
Go back to answer (A) of the problem we did.
reports have been and will continue to diminish
Reports have beendiminish? Reports have been to diminish? No. It should really say reports have been diminishing, but the word diminishing is not in the sentence.
So the parallelism fails in the original sentence; eliminate choice (A).
Answer (B) has a similar problem. It should say have diminished or have continued to diminish. Its not correct to say have diminish or have continue to diminish.
The other three choices all begin with will diminish, completely knocking out the have part. But interesting. Choices (C) and (D) both add another tense afterward, but choice (E) does not. It just says will continue to diminish.
Stop for a second. Whats the difference in meaning between saying something has diminished and something will diminish? Timeframe, of course. Has diminished has already started and its still true or still going on in the present. Will diminish will take place in the future.
But waitwhats the difference in meaning between will diminish and will continue to diminish? Will diminish is pure future, but will continue to diminish means that this thing already started to diminish and its going to continue to diminish in the future.
In other words: will continue to diminish encompasses the full meaning of has diminished and will diminish! It already started and it will keep going.
Its redundant to say both; you only need to say will continue to. Cross off answers (A), (B), (C), and (D) for redundant meaning!
The correct answer is (E).
Question for you: Did you cross off (E)or consider crossing it offbecause you felt that it was missing something? How come it just dropped that other tense, the one that all of the other choices had?
If so, heres where you need to retrain your ear. First, just because something was in the original sentence does not mean that the correct answer has to retain that thing. (This is especially true when that thing is redundant or illogical or ambiguoustheres actually something not-good about it. But it could be the case that the correct answer does drop some perfectly fine meaning from the original sentence. This doesnt happen often, but it does happen. If the other four answers are all wrong, then this one is the right one, even if the meaning has changed a bit.)
So first, instead of immediately being suspicious of (E) just because it changes something, take a step back and ask yourself: whats the actual meaning thats going on in this sentence? Specifically: Is there anything redundant or illogical or ambiguous about any of these constructions? What does it mean to drop the other verb and only use will continue?
In this case, will continue by definition means started in the past and continuing into the future, so theres no need to repeat part of that meaning with another verb somewhere else. If you spot that trap, you can cross off all four wrong answers!
Want more?Read the second part of this series.
Key Takeaways for redundancy in Sentence Correction
(1) Sometimes, you need to back away from the screen a little bit and think about the overall meaning of a sentence or part of a sentence. Dont be so focused on micro-portions that you lose sight of the big picture.
(2) Dont cross something off just because it changes (or appears to change) the meaning from whatever the original sentence said. Instead, look specifically for three things: redundant meaning, illogical meaning, or ambiguous meaning. (That last one is the hardest, by the waythats why I put it last.)
(3) As you get better with the above, its really important to be able to find the core sentence. Want more practice with that skill? Check out this series.
* GMATPrep questions courtesy of the Graduate Management Admissions Council. Usage of this question does not imply endorsement by GMAC.