Sentence Correction

Below are couple of questions whose solutions in the OG were hard to grasp.Could someone help me understand the solutions?

79. Ryonosuke Akutagawa's knowledge of the literatures
of Europe, China, and that of Japan were instrumental
in his development as a writer, informing his literary
stvle as much as the content of his fiction.
(A) that of Japan were instrumental in his
developmentas a writer, informing his literary
style as much as
(B) that of Japan was instrumental in his
development as a writer, and it informed both
his literary style as well as
(C) Japan was instrumental in his development as a
writer, informing both his literary style and
(D) Japan was instrumental in his development as a
writer, as it informed his literary style as much as
(E) Japan were instrumental in his development as
a writer, informing both his literary style in
addition to

In this question, I'm sure about A,B and E being incorrect. However, I can't understand why C is better than D.


74. Despite its covering the entire planet. Earth has a
crust that is not seamless or stationary, rather it is
fragmented into mobile semirigid plates.
(A) Despite its covering the entire planet, Earth has
a crust that is not seamless or stationary,
rather it is
(B) Despite the fact that it covers the entire planet,
Earth's crust is neither seamless nor is it
stationary, but is
(C) Despite covering the entire planet, Earth's crust
is neither seamless nor is it stationary, but
rather
(D) Although it covers the entire planet, Earth's
crust is neither seamless nor stationary, but
rather
(E) Although covering the entire planet, Earth has a
crust that is not seamless or stationary, but

Isn't it awkward and wordy to use "but" and "rather" together?

Thanks,
Nikhil

In the first question, D does not use the optimal construction and so the meaning is ambiguous or misconveyed. The as as construction is D seems to be conveying that his knowledge informed his literary style equally to the content of his fiction, which is not the idea here. The purpose of the sentence is not to compare the degree to which his knowledge informed them but rather to say the his knowledge informed both of them.

Further, even if that comparison were the correct meaning, which it's not, the construction is wrong as the comparison simplified is it informed as much as the content, which compares an action to a noun. Correctly constructed it would be it informed his literary style as much as it did the content, in which construction an action is being compared to another action.

C conveys the meaning correctly.

Regarding your second question, you are not the first to question the but rather construction. Using but and rather together does work actually, I even used it above, and that construction is found in multiple Official OAs.

Marty Murray wrote:In the first question, D does not use the optimal construction and so the meaning is ambiguous or misconveyed. The as as construction is D seems to be conveying that his knowledge informed his literary style equally to the content of his fiction, which is not the idea here. The purpose of the sentence is not to compare the degree to which his knowledge informed them but rather to say the his knowledge informed both of them.

Further, even if that comparison were the correct meaning, which it's not, the construction is wrong as the comparison simplified is it informed as much as the content, which compares an action to a noun. Correctly constructed it would be it informed his literary style as much as it did the content, in which construction an action is being compared to another action.

C conveys the meaning correctly.

Regarding your second question, you are not the first to question the but rather construction. Using but and rather together does work actually, I even used it above, and that construction is found in multiple Official OAs.

Oops...missed the parallel construction error in the "as....as" .Although you are spot on about the grammatical error, I still feel that the meanings conveyed in both choices are correct, at least from a theoretical if not a logical standpoint. Btw is it possible that the GMAT throws SC questions where one needs to choose between two choices solely on the basis of the meaning conveyed in the 2 choices? I believe it's kind of hard to predict what the author was thinking when he/she wrote the text.

Btw is it possible that the GMAT throws SC questions where one needs to choose between two choices solely on the basis of the meaning conveyed in the 2 choices?

Of course! But when we're considering meaning, we're not trying to read the mind of the sentence writer. We're simply choosing the meaning that is most logical/clear. Anytime you have a choice between a sentence whose meaning is murky, and one whose meaning is clear and logical, the GMAT will always prefer clear and logical. No mind-reading required.

radbuz wrote:Oops...missed the parallel construction error in the "as....as" .Although you are spot on about the grammatical error, I still feel that the meanings conveyed in both choices are correct, at least from a theoretical if not a logical standpoint. Btw is it possible that the GMAT throws SC questions where one needs to choose between two choices solely on the basis of the meaning conveyed in the 2 choices? I believe it's kind of hard to predict what the author was thinking when he/she wrote the text.

I believe the answer is yes, they do use meaning as a decision point. At the same time, when they do that, any distinction, such as that between logical and theoretically possible, is clear enough that one can figure out which answer choice to choose. Also, in my experience, rarely is there only one distinction that makes one answer choice superior to another. The choices we are discussing here exemplify that aspect of question design, in that the meaning error is combined with a grammatical error to make one choice clearly less sound than the other.

I can also tell you this, I had similar questions about SC a few months ago, and while your qualms and my issues with them have some validity, with some further assessment and practice I have gotten to the point where I can hack my way to the right answer close to 100 percent of the time, and for the most part, at least for the goal of getting a higher score, that with some decent hacking skills one can get them all right is all that matters.

On a different note - Is there any other source for OG solutions , especially for the last 30-40 SC questions. Although I'm able to get ~90% of them right, it is not because I understand the exact grammatical/logical flaw in each and every choice but because intuition helps me cross out some of the incorrect choices in which I cannot find the flaw. I do want to look at detailed explanations for such questions so that I'm able to understand the practical application of a particular grammar rule.

See what happens when you type each question, or some of it, into a search engine.

Generally you will find dozens of explanations for each.

You could also type them into the search bar on Beat the GMAT.

I'd also be tempted to do searches that included the question and GMATGuruNY or Mitch Hunt, because he knows so many cool details. Wow, that could be productive.

Having said that, there are some SC rules that matter a lot, rules such as parallelism, and some SC rules that you don't need to understand in detail in order to rock SC.

The main thing for rocking SC is being able to see things such as details and the logic, or lack thereof, of the structures of the answer choices. In other words, the SC questions are largely set up to test reasoning skills.

On another note, if you have verbal skills sufficient for getting most SC correct, then it's likely that without too much trouble, you could also get close to 100 percent of CR and RC correct.