A “Good Ear” isn’t Good Enough on GMAT Sentence Correction
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If you’re anything like me, you read books and articles avidly (although maybe less often than you did in college), and you’ve been told that you’re a good writer (although you definitely write less than you did in college). The Sentence Correction portion of GMAT Verbal seems like it should be easy for you: fix anything that sounds like bad writing, and you’ll do well here.
Unfortunately, that assumption is wrong.
You might think that if your Verbal percentage is high on your first practice test, you don’t need to learn a lot of grammar rules. Your time would be better spent memorizing geometry or practicing exponents. For one thing, focusing on your percentile rather than your raw score is a fallacy. For another, neglecting grammar rules means leaving “getable” points on the table.
The GMAT has clever ways of messing with students who don’t bother to learn grammar, and who just rely on their ears…
Things that “sound fine” may be wrong.
The GMAT knows which grammatical errors the average ear won’t pick up. Take a look at this sentence from a GMATPrep® problem, and ask yourself how it sounds:
Both weakened by concern about the government’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund and by growing fears of a rise in inflation, the country’s currency continued its slide to a record low against the dollar, which forced the central bank to intervene for the fourth time in a week.
You might think, “it sounds wordy, and the ‘slide to a record low’ sounded a bit weird, but the rest sounded fine.” If so, you were distracted by non-issues, and you missed two of the GMAT’s favorite traps!
- In a parallel structure with both X and Y, the X and Y portions must be in exactly the same format. If the meaning is clear enough, your ear will not hear the mixups in the structure. Look at what comes directly after both and what comes directly after and:
Both weakened by concern about the government’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund and by growing fears of a rise in inflation, the country’s currency continued its slide to a record low against the dollar, which forced the central bank to intervene for the fourth time in a week.
This structure is not parallel. A right answer would have said “Weakened both by… and by…” or “Both weakened by… and weakened by…”
You need to know exact rules of parallelism!
- The modifier starting with “which” is not correct here. This is one that your ear is unlikely to catch, because we’re almost all guilty of using “which” incorrectly in colloquial English: “I’m a good reader, which means I should do well on SC.” That’s incorrect grammar and incorrect logic!
A dependent clause starting with “which” should refer to the NOUN that comes directly before it. In our example sentence, the structure “… against the dollar, which forced the central bank to intervene…” implies that the dollar forced the bank to intervene. If we want to express that the ACTION of the currency sliding is what’s causing the bank to intervene, we can’t use “which.”
The grammatically correct way to express this is to use an ADVERBIAL modifier, such as a present participle: “… against the dollar, forcing the central bank to intervene…”
You need to know the grammatical difference between noun modifiers and adverbial modifiers.
Things that “sound bad” may be right.
On the flip side, the GMAT also knows that most students have a hard time distinguishing between sentences that are grammatically incorrect and those that are correct but awkward in style. You will see archaic or convoluted structures, and be tempted to cross them out. Make sure you’re only eliminating sentences that violate real grammar rules, or that have illogical meaning!
Consider this GMATPrep® sentence:
The bones of Majunatholusatopus, a meat-eating dinosaur that is a distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex and closely resembles South American predatory dinosaurs, have been discovered in Madagascar.
“Nope! That sounds terrible,” you might think. You’re not wrong – it does sounds terrible! Any decent high school English teacher would have made you edit and rearrange this sentence if you had written it in a paper.
I have frustrating news for you, though… this was the correct answer on this problem. There is nothing grammatically wrong with this sentence! The “have” sounds awkward because it’s so far removed from its subject, but the subject is “bones,” so “have” is perfectly correct.
Your task is not to ask yourself “what’s the best possible version of this sentence? How would I have written it?” That ideal sentence may not be there in the answer choices.
Instead, ask yourself: does this sentence violate any grammar rules that I know? Or is it illogical in meaning? If the answer to those questions is “no,” then don’t eliminate that answer choice.
Studying grammar isn’t as bad as you think.
Most of us hated studying grammar in high school, because it seemed nit-picky, and the list of rules seemed endless. The good news about the GMAT, though, is that there is a much shorter list of rules tested, and most of these rules involved logical meaning as well as structure.
These are the most commonly tested rules:
- parallelism of lists: either X or Y
- logical comparisons: X more than Y
- modifier usage: are we modifying the correct thing in a logical way?
- subject/verb agreement: singular noun + singular verb, plural noun + plural verb
- pronoun agreement: a pronoun should agree with (and make sense with) the noun that it replaces
- verb tenses: it should be clear when an action is taking place
If you master the fine points of these rules and when to recognize them, you’ll gain far more points on SC than you would if you just relied on your ear!
* GMATPrep® questions courtesy of the Graduate Management Admissions Council. Usage of this question does not imply endorsement by GMAC.
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Céilidh Erickson is a Manhattan Prep instructor based on New York City. When she tells people that her name is pronounced “kay-lee,” she often gets puzzled looks. Céilidh is a graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in comparative literature. After graduation, tutoring was always the job that bought her the greatest joy and challenge, so she decided to make it her full-time job. Check out Céilidh’s upcoming GMAT courses (she scored a 760, so you’re in great hands).