Introduction

Everything on this page was written by Erin Billy and is adapted from the book he is writing about the GMAT. The material on this page is also similar to the material that Erin uses in his classes at TestMagic.

Take a look at this example of a Sentence Correction question:

1. Scientists from all over the world are concerned about global warming.

O about
O with
O as to
O toward
O in regards to

When we see a question like this on the GMAT, we should choose the best answer. GMAT says that the correct answer should be grammatically correct, clear, unambiguous, and not awkward. But we’ll learn more about this later.

You should first notice that the first answer choice is the same as what appears in the question stem, so you don’t need to look for differences when the underlined part is really long.

In this question, we should choose the first answer, about since concerned is correctly followed by about or by. In other words, the sentence was already correct; we didn’t have to change anything.

What is GMAT looking for?

You can NEVER break a grammar rule.

GMAT is primarily trying to test our knowledge of written English, which is more formal than the English that we speak every day or even than that we write.

English, like all languages, has thousands of grammar rules, but most of them will not appear on the test. GMAT likes to test certain rules more than others, since it is usually these rules that most people have problems with. We will learn more about the top grammar points later.

Sometimes people get confused by all the stuff tested on the Sentence Correction section. It’s helpful to understand which parts of this section are more important than others.

Imagine we had a question like this:

I, after work, went home.

O I, after work, went home.
O After work I goes home.
O After my works, I went to home.
O I go to home after works.
O Going home after work.

Yeah, this is a silly question, but just for the sake of argument, which answer should we choose?

We only have one option: The original sentence. Even though the original sentence is awkward, it is not grammatically incorrect. All the other ones are grammatically incorrect and are therefore worse choices than the original sentence.

So, let’s look at the most commonly tested points on the Sentence Correction section. These points are listed roughly in the order of their importance on the test. For example, the most important rule for this section of the test is that we must never break a grammar rule. We also have a rule that a sentence be clear and concise. Let’s imagine we had to choose between two answer choices—one that was grammatically correct, but not concise, and one that was concise, but not grammatically correct. In such a case, we’d have to choose the grammatically correct answer choice, since the most important rule of Sentence Correction is that we not break any grammar rules.

I know that some of you will be wondering “What about conflicts between other points?”

That’s a good question, but the answer is not so easy. For example, I think if we had to choose between an ambiguous sentence, we’d probably want to choose the one that was not ambiguous, but I’d probably want to look at the sentence carefully before I made that decision. Such things on the GMAT (like in life) are not so easily categorized.

What we need to pay attention to

1. Grammar: Every correct answer is grammatically correct. In other words, you can NEVER choose an answer that breaks a grammar rule.

Example of mistake: Between you and I, I don’t think the plan will work. I is wrong—we need to use me (the object pronoun) after between. But you probably knew this one, didn’t you??

Example of a good answer choice: Between you and me, I don’t think the plan will work.

2. Ambiguity: The meaning of every word, of every part of the sentence should be clear.

Example of mistake: Joe invited Pedro to the movies because he was lonely. Who’s he? Is it Joe? Or Pedro? We don’t know, do we??

Example of a good answer choice: Joe invited Pedro to the movies because Joe [or Pedro, it could be either] was lonely.

3. Redundancy:

Example of mistake: The worker was extremely furious. furious already means extremely angry, so the extra word, extremely, is redundant.

Example of a good answer choice: The worker was furious.

4. Clarity:

Example of mistake: The membership of Gym X is similar to that of Gym Y. If we say that the two memberships are similar, we don’t know exactly how they are similar—they could be similar in size, in age, in demographics, in their dreams and goals; well, you get the picture—similar to is vague.

Example of a good answer choice: The size of the membership of Gym X is equivalent to that of Gym Y. In this sentence, we know we are talking about the number of members each gym has.

5. Avoid awkwardness:

Example of mistake: I, with the aid of a telescope, saw Venus. Yuck! This sentence doesn’t flow well, does it?

Example of a good answer choice: I saw Venus with the aid of a telescope. Ah!! Much nicer, don’t you think??

6. Conciseness:

Example of mistake: She is a person who is admired by me. Whew!! Very wordy, I’m sure you agree.

Example of a good answer choice: I admire her. Yeah, short, simple, clear, and to the point.

7. Word choice:

Example of mistake: Both companies were competing with each other. Yeah, I know. You probably think this sounds a little funny, but you’re not sure why. Look at the next one and see what you think.

Example of a good answer choice: Each company was competing with the other. Sounds better, don’t you think? In a nutshell, when we use both, we should talk about things people do together. When we use each, we are emphasizing that each side is separate.

A reminder: The right answer is not always a perfect answer

Our job is to choose the best answer, not the perfect answer.

If we analyze any sentence enough, we will soon realize that just about any sentence could be criticized. Remember the sentence above? That answer wasn’t a perfect answer, it was just the best one. In fact, GMAT will often try to trick us by making the right answer choice slightly awkward, as we saw in the simulated example above.