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by itishree » Tue Oct 15, 2013 9:30 am
Question. Dressed as a man and usingthe name Robert Shurtleff,
Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier's
pension, joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age
of 22. was injured three times, andwas discharged in
1783 because she had become too ill to serve.
(A) 22, was injured three times, and was discharged
in 1783 because she had become
(B) 22, was injured three times, while being
discharged in 1783 because she had become
(C) 22 and was injured three times, and discharged
in 1783,, being
(D) 22, injured three times, and was discharged in
1783 because she was
(E) 22, having been injured three times and
discharged in 1783, being

I have doubt between A and D , Why not D? when do we need to use passive voice?
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by AppleBees » Tue Oct 15, 2013 9:39 am
IMO, it's not D because a verb is not correctly used. I tried to simplify the sentence to

Deboran Sampson injured three times, and....

The sentence above does not make sense because it is not a complete sentence. it could be either "was injured" or "injured her legs" three times.

not sure if my thought process is valid.
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by theCodeToGMAT » Tue Oct 15, 2013 9:40 am
{D} - INCORRECT; "injured" is Adjective and is not parallel.
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by Mike@Magoosh » Tue Oct 15, 2013 9:41 am
itishree wrote:Question. Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier's pension, joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.
(A) 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become
(B) 22, was injured three times, while being discharged in 1783 because she had become
(C) 22 and was injured three times, and discharged in 1783, being
(D) 22, injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she was
(E) 22, having been injured three times and discharged in 1783, being

I have doubt between A and D , Why not D? when do we need to use passive voice?
Dear itishree
Of course, this is OG13 SC #37. I'm happy to help. :-)

First of all, we have the passive because the subject and theme of the sentence, Deborah Sampson, was the recipient of the action --- she received the injury: she didn't injure someone else. For more on when the passive voice is acceptable, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/active-vs- ... -the-gmat/
For more on the rhetorical importance of focusing on a topic, see:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/lessons/919-focus-on-a-topic

The deeper issue is parallelism. Choice (A) has correct parallelism:
....Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier's pension,
//joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22,
//was injured three times,
and
//was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve

We have three full verbs in parallel, which is 100% correct. Choice (D) changes the full verb "was injured" to a participle. Now, in another sentence design, it could be perfectly correct to have participial phrase modifying the subject:
Deborah Sampson, injured three times, was a true war hero.
That's a perfectly correct sentence. The problem is not with the participle itself -- the problem is parallelism. We can't have verb//participle//verb --- that's not proper parallelism. That's why (A) is correct.

For more on parallelism on the GMAT SC, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/parallelis ... orrection/

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)
Magoosh GMAT Instructor
https://gmat.magoosh.com/
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