Hello Everyone!
Let's take a closer look at this question to determine the best way to tackle it! First, here is the original question, with the major differences between the options highlighted in orange:
Plants are more efficient at acquiring carbon than are fungi, in the form of carbon dioxide, and converting it to energy-rich sugars.
(A) Plants are more efficient at acquiring carbon than are fungi
(B) Plants are more efficient at acquiring carbon than fungi
(C) Plants are more efficient than fungi at acquiring carbon
(D) Plants, more efficient than fungi at acquiring carbon
(E) Plants acquire carbon more efficiently than fungi
After a quick glance over the question and available options, it's clear that this is a comparison sentence! Whenever we see items being compared, there are a few things we can focus on to help us find the right option:
1. Parallelism (both items need to be written using similar wording, verb tenses, structure, etc.)
2. Comparing like with like (both items need to be the same in kind...such as comparing apples to apples...not apples to apple trees)
3. Check for modifiers to indicate what order things should be in
If you look closely, there IS a modifier right after the underlined part of this sentence: "...in the form of carbon dioxide...." What is in the form of carbon dioxide? The fungi, or the carbon? The carbon! This means that the word "carbon" MUST come directly before the modifier "in the form of carbon dioxide" for it to make sense! Let's see how our options stack up:
(A) Plants are more efficient at acquiring carbon than are fungi
(B) Plants are more efficient at acquiring carbon than fungi
(C) Plants are more efficient than fungi at acquiring carbon
(D) Plants, more efficient than fungi at acquiring carbon
(E) Plants acquire carbon more efficiently than fungi
We can eliminate options A, B, and E because they don't place the antecedent directly before/after the modifier!
Now that we're only left with 2 options, let's take a closer look at each. To make this easier, I've gone ahead and added the rest of the sentence to each option.
(C) Plants are more efficient than fungi at acquiring carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, and converting it to energy-rich sugars.
This is CORRECT! There is a clear subject and verb, and there is no question that the modifier phrase "in the form of carbon dioxide" is clearly referring to carbon!
(D) Plants, more efficient than fungi at acquiring carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, and converting it to energy-rich sugars.
While this sentence correctly places carbon before the modifier phrase, it's still INCORRECT because it's missing a verb! If you were to pair up the subject (Plants) with any of these clauses, NONE of them would create a complete sentence! That's a clear indication that there is no verb to connect the subject to all of these other phrases!
There you have it - option C is our answer! By knowing the common problems with comparison sentences, we can quickly spot problems and get to the right answer quickly!
Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.
