Chapter 10

Bringing It Together: A Mini Practice Verbal Section

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Practicing sentence-correction, reading comprehension, and critical reasoning questions

check Finding out why right answers are right and wrong answers are wrong

Like the real GMAT verbal section, the mini practice test in this chapter has an approximately equal distribution of each of the three types of verbal questions. It contains nine reading comprehension questions, ten sentence-correction questions, and nine critical reasoning questions. The total of 28 questions makes this mini verbal test a little shorter than the 36-question GMAT verbal section. To get more practice, take the full-length practice exams included with this book.

Although we can’t simulate a computer in this book, don’t let that deter you. Just mark the answers right in the book, and try not to look at the answer key until after you’ve answered the questions. We designate each answer choice with a letter to make it easier to reference it in the answer explanations, but on the actual computerized exam, you’ll simply click the oval that precedes each answer choice to mark your answer.

To best mimic the computer experience during this mini practice test, answer each question in sequence and don’t go back and change any of your answers after you’ve moved on to the next question. At the actual exam, you won’t have a test booklet to write in, so try not to write anything except your answers on the pages of this book. To keep your notes and record eliminated answers, use scratch paper to simulate the noteboard you’ll use on test day.

Take the time to read through the answer explanations at the end of the chapter, even for the questions you get right. The explanations apply the techniques covered in the other chapters of this book and show you why a certain answer is a better choice than the others.

Working Through Verbal Reasoning Practice Questions

If you’re the competitive type and want to subject yourself to a timed test, give yourself about 50 minutes to complete the 28 questions in this section.

Here’s a quick review of the directions for the three types of verbal questions that appear in this mini practice test (and on the real GMAT):

Sentence-correction questions: Choose the answer choice that best phrases the underlined portion of the given sentence according to the rules of standard English. The first answer choice duplicates the phrasing of the underlined portion; the other four choices provide alternative phrasings. Choose the one that rephrases the sentence in the clearest, most grammatically correct manner.
Reading comprehension questions: Choose the best answer to every question based on what the passage states directly or indirectly.
Critical reasoning questions: Pick the answer choice that best answers the question about the argument provided.

1. A study of energy consumption revealed that homeowners living within 100 miles of the Gulf of Mexico used less energy from November 1 to April 30 than did homeowners in any other region of the United States. The same study found that from May 1 to October 31, those same homeowners used more energy than any other homeowners.

Which of the following, if true, would most contribute to an explanation of the facts above?

(A) People who own homes near the Gulf of Mexico often own second homes in cooler locations, where they spend the summers.

(B) Air conditioning a home is a more energy-efficient process than heating a similarly sized home.

(C) Homes near the Gulf of Mexico require very little heating during the warm winters, but air conditioners must run longer in the summer to cool the warm, humid air.

(D) The average daily temperature is lower year-round near the Gulf of Mexico than in other areas of the United States.

(E) Because of the large number of refineries located in the Gulf region, the price of energy there is less than in any other area of the country.

2. A conservation group is trying to convince Americans that the return of gray wolves to the northern United States is a positive development. Introduction of the wolf faces significant opposition because of the wolf’s reputation as a killer of people and livestock. So that the wolf will be more acceptable to average Americans, the conservation group wants to dispel the myth that the wolf is a vicious killer.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the opposition’s claim?

(A) Wolves are necessary for a healthy population of white-tailed deer because wolves kill the weaker animals and limit the population to sustainable numbers.

(B) In a confrontation, black bears are much more dangerous to humans than wolves are.

(D) There has never been a documented case of a wolf killing a human in the 500-year recorded history of North America.

(E) Wolves occasionally take livestock because domestic animals are not equipped to protect themselves the way wild animals are.

Questions 3–6 refer to the following passage.

This passage is excerpted from The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be, by Dana Mackenzie, PhD (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.):

It is hard for us to imagine today how utterly different the world of night used to be from the daylight world. Of course, we can still re-create something of that lost mystique. When we sit around a campfire and tell ghost stories, our goose bumps (and our children’s) remind us of the terrors that night used to hold. But it is all too easy for us to pile in the car at the end of our camping trip and return to the comfort of our incandescent, fluorescent, floodlit modern word. Two thousand, or even two hundred, years ago there was no such escape from the darkness. It was a physical presence that gripped the world from sunset until the cock’s crow.

“As different as night and day,” we say today. But in centuries past, night and day really were different. In a time when every scrap of light after sunset was desperately appreciated, when travelers would mark the road by piling up light stones or by stripping the bark off of trees to expose the lighter wood underneath, the Moon was the traveler’s greatest friend. It was known in folklore as “the parish lantern.” It was steady, portable, and — unlike a torch — entailed no risk of fire. It would never blow out, although it could, of course, hide behind a cloud.

Nowadays we don’t need the moon to divide the light from the darkness because electric lights do it for us. Many of us have never even seen a truly dark sky. According to a recent survey on light pollution, 97 percent of the U.S. population lives under a night sky at least as bright as it was on a half-moon night in ancient times. Many city-dwellers live their entire lives under the equivalent of a full moon.

3. The primary purpose of this passage is to

(A) compare and contrast nighttime in the modern world with the dark nights of centuries past

(B) explain why the invention of the electric light was essential to increasing worker productivity

(D) describe the diminishing brightness of the moon and the subsequent need for more electric lights

(E) argue for an end to the excessive light pollution that plagues 97 percent of the U.S. population

4. When the author says, “Many city-dwellers live their entire lives under the equivalent of a full moon,” he is essentially saying that

(A) city-dwellers will never be able to truly appreciate the mystique and beauty of a truly dark night

(B) there is no longer a need for moonlight because artificial light is sufficient

(D) the amount of artificial light that shines in cities is enough to produce the same amount of light as a full moon

(E) it is easier to view the moon from cities than from rural areas

5. The passage mentions all the following as possible ways for travelers to find the path at night except

(A) piles of light-colored stones

(B) the moon

(D) railings made of light wood

(E) trees with the bark stripped off

6. The author includes the statistic “97 percent of the U.S. population lives under a night sky at least as bright as it was on a half-moon night in ancient times” to primarily emphasize which of the following points?

(A) Modern humans have the luxury of being able to see well at night despite cloud cover or a moonless night.

(B) Most modern people cannot really understand how important the moon was to people in centuries past.

(D) A full moon in ancient times was brighter than modern electric lights, which are only as bright as a half-moon.

(E) Light pollution is one of the most important problems facing the United States in the 21st century.

7. The sugar maples give us syrup in March, a display of beautiful flowers in spring, and their foliage is spectacular in October.

(A) their foliage is spectacular in October

(B) spectacularly, their foliage changes color in October

(D) spectacular foliage in October

(E) October foliage that is spectacular in orange and red

8. The Industrial Revolution required levels of financing which were previously unknown; for instance, Florence had 80 banking houses that took deposits, made loans, and performed many of the other functions of a modern bank.

(A) which were previously unknown

(B) that were previously unknown

(D) which had been unknown in earlier times

(E) that was previously unknown

9. His efforts to learn scuba diving, a major goal Bob had set for himself for the coming year, has not successfully begun, seeing as how his fear of claustrophobia is triggered anytime he is underwater.

(A) has not successfully begun, seeing as how

(B) have not successfully begun, seeing as how

(D) has not been successful because

(E) have not yet met with success, on account of

10. The intern’s day-to-day duties varied considerably, but typically they included tasks like picking up coffee, clean up the office and arranging meetings for executives.

(A) tasks like picking up coffee, clean up the office, and arranging meetings for executives

(B) tasks like picking up coffee, cleaning up the office, and arranging meetings for executives

(D) tasks such as pick up coffee, clean up the office, and arrange meetings for executives

(E) tasks like pick up coffee, clean up the office, and arrange meetings for executives

11. You never want to think that your spouse may be the person trying to hide assets from you, but they very well might be trying too.

(A) but they very well might be trying too

(B) but they very well might be trying to

(D) but he or she very well might be doing so

(E) but they very well might be doing so

12. After the move, Amanda started shopping at a grocery store that was closer to her new home, but she found it had fewer produce, less varieties of fresh juice, and less options for healthy eating then her previous store of choice.

(A) fewer produce, less varieties of fresh juice, and less options for healthy eating then her previous store of choice

(B) less produce, fewer varieties of fresh juice, and fewer options for healthy eating than her previous store of choice

(D) fewer produce, fewer varieties of fresh juice, and less options for healthy eating than her previous store of choice

(E) fewer produce, fewer varieties of fresh juice, and fewer options for healthy eating than her previous store of choice

Questions 13 and 14 are based on the following information.

Tom: The unemployment rate has dropped below 5 percent, and that is good news for America. A lower unemployment rate is better for almost everyone.

Shelly: Actually, a low unemployment rate is good for most workers but not for everyone. Workers are certainly happy to have jobs, but many businesses are negatively affected by a low unemployment rate because they have fewer applicants for jobs, and to expand their workforce, they have to hire workers they would not usually hire. The wealthiest Americans also privately complain about the inability to get good gardeners, housecleaners, and nannies when most Americans are already employed. So a low unemployment rate is not, in fact, good for America.

13. Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument that a low unemployment rate is bad for business?

(A) Businesses must pay skilled or experienced workers higher salaries when the unemployment rate is low.

(B) The states don’t have to pay unemployment compensation to as many workers when unemployment is low.

(D) Inflation can increase with low unemployment, making capital more expensive for any business seeking to expand.

(E) Low unemployment rates generally mean that Americans have more money to spend on the goods and services created by American businesses.

14. Shelly’s conclusion that “a low unemployment rate is not, in fact, good for America” relies on the assumption that

(A) what is bad for businesses owners and the wealthy is bad for America

(B) fluctuations in the unemployment rate affect the number of applicants for job openings

(D) business owners always want what is best for their workers even when it negatively impacts the bottom line

(E) low unemployment hurts some workers because they would prefer to stay at home and collect unemployment checks

15. A particular company makes a system that is installed in the engine block of a car and, if that car is stolen, relays the car’s location to police via satellite. The recovery rate of stolen cars with this device is 90 percent. This system helps everyone because it is impossible for a thief to tell which cars it is installed on. For these reasons, insurance companies try to encourage customers to get this system by offering lower rates to those who have the system. Competing systems include brightly colored steel bars that attach to the steering wheel and loud alarms that go off when the car is tampered with. These systems simply encourage thieves to steal different cars, and when cars with these devices are stolen, the police rarely recover them.

Which of the following is the most logical conclusion to the author’s premises?

(A) Insurance companies should give the same discount to car owners who have any protective system because their cars are less likely to be stolen.

(B) The police shouldn’t allow car owners to install the loud sirens on their cars because everyone simply ignores the sirens anyway.

(C) Car owners with the system that relays location to the police should prominently advertise the fact on the side window of their cars.

(D) Thieves should simply steal the cars with loud alarms or bright steel bars because those cars probably wouldn’t also have the more effective system installed.

(E) Insurance companies should give less of a discount, or no discount at all, to the siren and steering-wheel systems because they aren’t as effective as the relay system.

16. The managers were asked to rate their depth of knowledge having been increased as a result of the emergency simulation, and in each area, they reported large gains.

(A) their depth of knowledge having been increased

(B) how much their depth of knowledge had increased

(D) how deep their knowledge is

(E) their knowledge depth

17. Keeping the nose of her kayak directly into the wind, she paddled fiercely toward the safety of the harbor through the seeming endless waves, each of those larger than the last.

(A) through the seeming endless waves, each of those larger than the last

(B) through the seeming endless waves, each larger than the last

(D) through the seemingly endless waves, each larger than the last

(E) through waves that seemingly have no end, each larger than the last

18. Companies X and Y have the same number of employees working the same number of hours per week. According to the records kept by the human resources department of each company, the employees of company X took nearly twice as many sick days as the employees of company Y. Therefore, the employees of company Y are healthier than the employees of company X.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the conclusion?

(A) Company X allows employees to use sick days to take care of sick family members.

(B) Company Y offers its employees dental insurance and company X doesn’t.

(D) Company Y uses a newer system for keeping records of sick days.

(E) Both companies offer two weeks of sick days per year.

Questions 19–23 refer to the following passage.

This passage is excerpted from Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture, by David Bollier (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.):

For millennia, the circulation of music in human societies has been as free as the circulation of air and water; it just comes naturally. Indeed, one of the ways that a society constitutes itself as a society is by freely sharing its words, music, and art. Only in the past century or so has music been placed in a tight envelope of property rights and strictly monitored for unauthorized flows. In the past decade, the proliferation of personal computers, Internet access, and digital technologies has fueled two conflicting forces: the democratization of creativity and the demand for stronger copyright protections.

While the public continues to have nominal fair use rights to copyrighted music, in practice the legal and technological controls over music have grown tighter. At the same time, creators at the fringes of mass culture, especially some hip-hop and remix artists, remain contemptuous of such controls and routinely appropriate whatever sounds they want to create interesting music.

Copyright protection is a critically important tool for artists in earning a livelihood from their creativity. But as many singers, composers, and musicians have discovered, the benefits of copyright law in the contemporary marketplace tend to accrue to the recording industry, not to the struggling garage band. As alternative distribution and marketing outlets have arisen, the recording industry has sought to ban, delay, or control as many of them as possible. After all, technological innovations that provide faster, cheaper distribution of music are likely to disrupt the industry’s fixed investments and entrenched ways of doing business. New technologies allow newcomers to enter the market and compete, sometimes on superior terms. New technologies enable new types of audiences to emerge that may or may not be compatible with existing marketing strategies.

No wonder the recording industry has scrambled to develop new technological locks and broader copyright protections; they strengthen its control of music distribution. If metering devices could turn barroom singalongs into a market, the music industry would likely declare this form of unauthorized musical performance to be copyright infringement.

19. Which of the following most accurately states the main idea of the passage?

(A) Only with the development of technology in the past century has music begun to freely circulate in society.

(B) The recording industry is trying to develop an ever-tighter hold on the distribution of music, which used to circulate freely.

(D) Technology allows new distribution methods that threaten to undermine the marketing strategies of music companies.

(E) If music is no longer allowed to flow freely through the society, then the identity of the society itself will be lost.

20. Given the author’s overall opinion of increased copyright protections, what is his attitude toward “hip-hop and remix artists” mentioned in Paragraph 2?

(A) wonder that they aren’t sued more for their theft of copyright-protected music

(B) disappointment that they don’t understand the damage they are doing to society

(D) approval of their continued borrowing of music despite tighter copyright controls

(E) shock at their blatant sampling of the music of other artists

21. According to the passage, new technology has resulted (or will result) in each of the following except

(A) new locks on music distribution

(B) newcomers’ competing in the music market

(D) democratization of creativity

(E) faster, cheaper distribution of music

22. The author of the passage would likely agree most with which of the following statements?

(A) Small-time musicians do not benefit from strict copyright protections in the same manner as record companies do.

(B) Copyright protections are designed to let music artists keep more of the money they earn through their talent.

(D) Recording companies embrace new technologies because they help encourage the spread of music.

(E) Copyright protections encourage creativity among musicians because the artists must find new ways to share their music with the masses.

23. The final sentence of the passage seems to imply what about the executives of the record industry?

(A) They have found ways to make money from any performance of any music at any time.

(B) They are boldly leading the music industry into a new technological era of vastly increased profits.

(C) They want their music to be performed as often as possible by the maximum number of people to create greater exposure for artists.

(D) They don’t actually like music or know anything about music and are attempting to limit the society’s exposure to music.

(E) No performance of music anywhere is safe from their attempts to control the distribution of all music.

24. Five new loon pairs successfully raised chicks this year, bringing to 24 the number of pairs actively breeding in the lakes of Massachusetts.

(A) bringing

(B) and brings

(D) and it brought

(E) and brought

25. New laws make it easier to patent just about anything, from parts of the human genome to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Commentators are concerned about the implications of allowing patents for things that can hardly be described as “inventions.” However, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office believes that allowing for strong copyright and patent protections fosters the kind of investment in research and development needed to spur innovation.

Which of the following can be properly inferred from the preceding statements?

(A) It was not possible in the past to patent something as common as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

(B) The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is more interested in business profits than in true innovation.

(D) The human genome is part of nature and shouldn’t be patented.

(E) Commentators who are concerned about too many patents aren’t very well informed.

26. The process of “gerrymandering,” or manipulating voter-district boundaries so that one party gains a considerable advantage in a district over another, is making the modern political climate more divisive than ever. It ensures that people with likeminded ideals end up densely packed in the same districts, and those people then elect officials who also share those likeminded ideals.

These elected officials are less prone to compromise, and this creates an unnecessary and harmful divide between parties.

Assuming all the following statements are true, which would most significantly weaken the argument made above?

(A) Gerrymandering sets up an unfair advantage by creating some districts that are nearly guaranteed to vote for a particular party, thereby freeing up more time and resources for that party to campaign elsewhere.

(B) People with likeminded ideals have an innate desire to live alongside others who share similar belief systems, regardless of their political affiliation.

(D) When people with likeminded ideals live in the same district, they tend to continuously elect politicians with very similar beliefs.

(E) Gerrymandering can be executed by both political parties.

27. In a recent survey, one out of six Americans were shown to have vision problems, which is a notable increase over the past two decades. The amount of time Americans spend in front of computer and television screens has risen sharply, and to reduce the number of Americans suffering from vision issues, the amount of screen exposure must also be reduced.

Which of the following, if true, would most substantially weaken the author’s conclusion?

(A) Increased screen time is directly correlated with vision problems.

(B) The connection between screen time and vision problems is not entirely clear.

(D) Americans can reduce their risk of vision problems caused by too much screen time by dimming the screen and using a larger font.

(E) The majority of Americans with vision problems are older people, and the percentage of people over age 60 has steadily increased over the past twenty years.

28. Despite the fact that they were colonists, more Americans thought of themselves as British citizens, and throughout the early years of the American Revolution, more than half of all Americans were loyal to Britain.

(A) more Americans thought of themselves as British citizens

(B) fewer Americans felt that they were British citizens

(D) many of them felt like British citizens

(E) most Americans believed we were British citizens

Understanding What’s Right with Answer Explanations

You can check your answers to the practice questions by reading through the following explanations. To get the most benefit, read through every explanation, even the ones for the questions you answered correctly.

C. This critical reasoning question asks you to explain the facts in the passage by providing a piece to the cause-and-effect pattern. With cause-and-effect questions, you select the answer choice that could logically cause the effects noted in the premises. So for this problem, you have to decide which of the five choices helps explain why Gulf Coast homes use little energy in the winter and a great deal of energy in the summer. Without even looking at the answer choices, you may conclude that the Gulf Coast climate is milder than other parts of the nation in the winter and perhaps hotter in the summer. The correct answer probably addresses that issue.

You can eliminate Choice (A) because if most Gulf Coast residents spend the summer elsewhere, their vacant homes would use less energy during summer months rather than more. This answer would produce the opposite effect of that explained in the argument. Choice (B) would also produce the opposite effect of that found in the argument. Another important reason for eliminating Choice (B) is that it doesn’t provide a way of comparing energy use in the Gulf region to energy use in the rest of the country, which is the real issue in this argument.

Choice (C) sounds like the answer we imagined before reading through the choices. It explains why the Gulf region would have lower energy use in winter and higher use in summer, which may explain why it’s different from the rest of the country as a whole. Although Choice (C) is probably the correct answer, read through the remaining two choices just to be sure.

Choice (D) doesn’t work because a region that’s cool year-round would have high energy consumption in the winter for heat and low consumption in the summer. And you can eliminate Choice (E) because the argument is about energy consumption, not energy price. So the correct answer is Choice (C).
D. This critical reasoning question asks you to weaken the opposition’s statement that the wolf is vicious, so look for a statement that shows that the wolf isn’t a danger to people or livestock. Begin by eliminating answers that don’t address the appropriate conclusion. Choice (A) deals with the beneficial impact of wolves on the ecosystem but doesn’t talk about their propensity toward viciousness to humans or livestock, so eliminate it. You can also eliminate Choice (C) because the hunting prowess of the wolf isn’t the issue, and this choice may actually strengthen the contention that wolves are dangerous. Choice (E) also doesn’t weaken the conclusion in question; it argues that wolves may threaten livestock. This leaves you with Choices (B) and (D). Choice (B) compares the danger posed by wolves with the danger posed by black bears. Even if a wolf is less dangerous than a bear, that doesn’t mean a wolf isn’t dangerous. The best answer is Choice (D), because it provides a statistic that weakens the opposition’s argument that wolves are dangerous to humans.
A. For a primary-purpose reading comprehension question, you’re looking for the reason the author wrote the passage.

Focus on the passage as a whole and not on any particular portion. You usually can find clues to the main theme and the author’s purpose in the first and last paragraphs.

The main idea of this passage is that night was very different in centuries past than it is in current times, and the author’s purpose is to show how this is true. So look for an answer that reflects this purpose.

You can start by eliminating answers based on their first words. The words compare and contrast, explain, and describe reflect the author’s purpose, but lament and argue imply more emotion on the part of the author than is displayed in the passage, so eliminate Choices (C) and (E). Worker productivity has nothing to do with showing how our ancestors perceived night differently, so you can eliminate Choice (B). Choice (D) is simply wrong; the author doesn’t maintain that the moon is actually getting darker, just that it’s become overshadowed by electric lights. So that leaves Choice (A) as the correct answer.
D. Arguably the biggest clue to Choice (D) lies in the second-to-last sentence, when the author references a “recent survey of light pollution” in cities. This implies that there is so much visible light in cities that residents need no longer “mark the road by piling up light stones or by stripping the bark off of trees to expose the lighter wood underneath” to light their way to their destination. It’s always wise to consider all the other possible answer choices, though, just to make sure. Choices (A) and (C) are somewhat similar, in that they both intimate that city-dwellers are missing out on the beauty of nature and the world around them. This doesn’t appear to be the focus of the passage, however; the passage is more focused on how people used to make up for the lack of light and how they no longer need to do so to function after dark. So, you can probably eliminate both options. Choice (E) doesn’t make a lot of sense; it is probably easier to get a good look at the moon in a rural area, where tall buildings, pollution, and so on are less likely to block your view. You’re down to either Choice (B) or (D). The two choices seem similar, but of the two, Choice (D) is the stronger option. The last sentence provides that artificial light is “equivalent” to moonlight, which is more synonymous to the “same amount” of illumination in Choice (D) than “sufficient” in Choice (B).
D. This specific information exception question asks you to refer to the text to eliminate answers that are ways in the passage that travelers can find a path at night. The second paragraph specifically mentions Choice (A), light-colored stones; Choice (B), the moon; Choice (C), torches; and Choice (E), trees with the bark stripped off. Railings, Choice (D), aren’t mentioned anywhere in the passage so it’s the correct answer.
B. This question asks you about the use of a specific statistic. To answer this question correctly, keep in mind the author’s purpose for writing the passage, which you’ve already considered in the third question. Find the choice that links the statistic to the author’s purpose of comparing nighttime now and nighttime in centuries past. Eliminate Choice (C) because the author compares time periods, not modern countries. Because the passage doesn’t indicate that the moon is brighter than electric lights, you can eliminate Choice (D). Although the 97 percent statistic may lead you to conclude that light pollution is a big problem, that’s not the author’s reason for using the statistic, so eliminate Choice (E). Choice (A) is a little more plausible, but Choice (B) is better because the author is more concerned with showing how night skies are different now than with showing that the modern well-lit sky is a luxury.
D. This sentence-correction question has a parallelism problem. You know this because the underlined portion is a part of a list of elements joined by a conjunction and not all the elements in the list exhibit the same construction. The third element is expressed as a clause, and the other elements are noun phrases. Because the sentence contains an error, you know Choice (A) is wrong. Choices (B) and (C) don’t change the clause to a phrase. Although Choice (E) is a noun phrase, its construction is unnecessarily wordy: foliage that is spectacular versus spectacular foliage. Choice (E) also introduces new information (the colors orange and red), which alters the original sentence. Choice (D) maintains parallel construction without adding unnecessary words, so it’s the correct answer.
B. This sentence-correction question has an improperly used pronoun. You use which to introduce nonessential clauses. Because the information after the which is essential to the meaning of the sentence, you have to use that instead. You can eliminate Choices (A) and (D) because both keep the which construction. Choice (C) uses too many words to mean previously unknown, and Choice (E) changes which to that but presents a new problem because that refers to levels, which is plural, so it requires the plural verb have. So Choice (B) is the only answer that corrects the problem without creating new ones.
C. The underlined portion of this sentence-correction question has problems with agreement and rhetorical construction. The plural subject efforts doesn’t work with the singular verb has. Because you find an error, you automatically eliminate Choice (A). Choice (D) doesn’t correct the agreement error. This leaves you with Choices (B), (C), and (E), all of which correct the agreement problem, but because is a better, clearer construction than seeing as how and on account of, so Choice (C) is the best answer.
C. There are two issues with the sentence about the intern’s task in the original version. First, there is the issue of using like instead of such as to introduce a series of examples. Use like to compare two nouns: “Like Dave, Joe performs many duties.”

The second problem with the sentence is that it lacks parallelism. In the list of the intern’s tasks, two of the verbs (picking and arranging) take on the gerund form (meaning they end in -ing) while the third verb, clean, doesn’t. All three tasks in the series have to have the same grammatical construction, meaning clean must be changed to its gerund form, cleaning, for the sentence to be correct. The only sentence that effectively corrects both issues is Choice (C).
D. The small underlined portion of this sentence contains three errors. The first concerns the pronoun they, which is a plural pronoun that renames the singular noun spouse. Eliminate Choices (A), (B), and (E). And of course too in Choice (A) means also and thus is wrong. The other error snuck in here is the good ol’ dangling preposition. Standard writing English frowns upon ending a sentence with a preposition like to. Of the remaining two answers, Choice (D) corrects the preposition error.
B. The sentence as written has two problems: It confuses the use of less and fewer and of then and than. The author uses less and fewer improperly. Fewer refers to nouns you can actually count, such as socks, lollipops, and red trucks, whereas less is used for items that can’t be easily quantified, such as rain or sugar. Since produce can’t be easily counted, the use of fewer in the original sentence is incorrect — so you can go ahead and knock out Choices (A), (D), and (E) right off the bat. “Varieties of juice” can be counted. Therefore, fewer is correct in this circumstance. You’ve narrowed your choices down to either Choice (B) or Choice (C). Because Choice (C) uses then to make a comparison, it must be wrong. Then references time and is never used in comparisons. Choice (B) fixes the errors.
E. This critical reasoning question requires you to weaken Shelly’s argument that a low unemployment rate is bad for business. Choices (A) and (D) give two examples of how low unemployment hurts businesses, so they actually strengthen the argument instead of weaken it. Eliminate them along with Choices (B) and (C), because these statements are basically off topic; they deal with government and universities, not businesses. Choice (E) is the correct answer, because employed American workers’ buying more American products provides a significant advantage for businesses.
A. This critical reasoning question asks you to identify an assumption that Shelly relied on in making her conclusion that a low unemployment rate isn’t “good for America.”

When you’re asked to find an assumption, look for a statement that supports the conclusion but isn’t actually stated in the argument.

Eliminate choices that don’t support the conclusion. Whether businesses favor workers over the bottom line may affect the unemployment rate, but it doesn’t show how low unemployment isn’t good for America, so Choice (D) is incorrect. Choice (E) doesn’t support the conclusion, either. The conclusion is about what’s good for America in general, not a select few disinclined workers.

A person’s assumption wouldn’t contradict a stated premise, so Choice (C) can’t be right. Choice (B) may support the conclusion, but it’s actually stated in the given premises and, therefore, can’t be an unstated assumption. Choice (A) is the correct answer because it links Shelly’s premises about businesses and wealthy Americans to her conclusion about America in general.
E. This critical reasoning question requires you to draw a conclusion from the premises included in the argument.

Look for an answer choice that addresses all the information in the premises. You can eliminate conclusions that are off topic or incomplete.

Eliminate choices that don’t include all the elements of the argument. Choices (B), (C), and (D) don’t mention the insurance companies that are the subject of one of the premises. This leaves you with Choice (A) and Choice (E), which offer nearly opposite conclusions. The premises indicate that one of the reasons insurance companies like the engine-block system is that thieves don’t know which cars have it installed. Choice (A) concludes that cars with any protective system, including alarms and steering-wheel bars, should get a discount because those cars are less likely to be stolen. This conclusion doesn’t flow logically from the premises, however, because the reasons given for the insurance discounts are a high recovery rate of stolen vehicles and the general deterrent to all car thefts. Neither of these advantages comes from the alarms or steering-wheel bars. Choice (E) addresses all the premises and logically concludes the argument, making it the correct answer.
B. The underlined portion in this sentence-correction question is passive, so you can eliminate Choice (A). Choices (C), (D), and (E) don’t address both the knowledge increase and the knowledge depth, so you can eliminate them, too. The best answer is Choice (B). It makes the construction active and includes both the increase and depth of knowledge.
D. You probably first noticed that the underlined portion of this sentence-correction question contains a modification error. Adjectives like seeming modify nouns and pronouns. They can’t modify other adjectives like endless. Adverbs must be used for that. Instead of seeming, you can use the adverb seemingly. Therefore, you know you can disregard Choice (A). You can also eliminate Choice (B) because it doesn’t make the change to seemingly. Choices (C), (D), and (E) change seeming to seemingly.

This underlined portion also has a problem with redundancy. Each refers sufficiently to waves; of those isn’t necessary. Choice (C) doesn’t fix this error, so it’s wrong. Choices (D) and (E) both fix each of the errors, but Choice (E) creates another. The sentence is past tense, so the verb have should be in past tense like this: seemingly had no end. Choice (D) corrects both original errors and doesn’t introduce more, so it’s the correct answer.
A. This critical reasoning question asks you to weaken the conclusion that the employees of company Y are healthier than the employees of company X. The author draws the conclusion that Y’s employees are healthier than X’s employees based on the cause-and-effect argument that more sick days mean sicker employees.

To weaken cause-and-effect arguments, look for an answer choice that shows another cause is possible for the effect.

Choice (E) doesn’t distinguish between the two companies. It can’t show another cause for the different number of sick days and, therefore, can’t be right. Choice (D) differentiates between the two companies’ record-keeping, but it doesn’t explain how company Y’s new records system accounts for fewer sick days. Dental insurance shouldn’t affect the number of sick days, so Choice (B) doesn’t work. Choice (C) doesn’t address the issue of company X’s greater number of sick days, so free gym memberships don’t matter. The best answer is Choice (A) because it provides a reason other than employee health for the greater number of sick days that company X’s employees take.
B. This reading comprehension question asks for the main idea of the passage.

Answers to main-theme questions are usually more general than specific in their wording.

Choices (C) and (D) each focus on sub-themes in the passage but not the main idea. Copyright protection and technology are specific subjects covered in the passage, but they don’t make up the main idea, which is that the music industry is trying to control distribution of music. You can eliminate Choice (A) because it’s not supported by any part of the passage. The passage clearly states that music has circulated freely in society for millennia. Choice (E) is wrong because it goes beyond what’s stated in the passage. The author may well imply that without the free flow of music, society will lose its identity, but this isn’t the passage’s main idea. So that leaves Choice (B) as the best answer.
D. This reading comprehension question asks about the author’s attitude toward hip-hop and remix artists as specifically mentioned in the second paragraph. The real GMAT would highlight this phrase in yellow. You’ve already answered a question about the main idea, so you know the author is concerned about the tightening grip the recording industry has on the distribution of music. Because the hip-hop and remix artists defy the music industry, they’ll likely meet with the author’s approval. Although Choice (A) may express a valid opinion, you can eliminate it because it isn’t supported by the passage. The author probably approves of hip-hop and remix artists, so he or she doesn’t think they’re doing damage — Choice (B) is completely off base. Envy and shock are usually too strong emotions for GMAT passages, so rule out Choices (C) and (E). The correct answer is Choice (D).
C. Here’s another specific information reading comprehension question looking for an exception. Examine the text and eliminate the answers you find there. The one that remains is your correct answer. In connection with technology, the passage mentions Choice (A), new locks on music distribution, in the second paragraph; Choice (B), newcomers’ competing in the market, in the third paragraph; Choice (D), democratization of creativity, in the first paragraph; and Choice (E), faster, cheaper distribution of music, in the third paragraph. The author certainly doesn’t mention better music. So Choice (C) is correct.
A. If you picked Choice (B), you may not have read closely enough, or you may have stopped reading right after the author refers to copyright protections as “… a critically important tool for artists in earning a livelihood from their creativity,” because the author then goes on to lament how such protections tend to benefit the recording companies more than the artists. As for Choice (C), because a key point made by the author throughout the passage is that recording companies are, in fact, greedy, and will do just about anything to make and keep as much money as possible, you can easily eliminate that answer. Choice (D), too, can be eliminated with relative ease, as the author makes several references to the fact that record companies do just the opposite of embracing new technologies. They instead seek to “ban, delay, or control” them for their own benefit. Choice (E) can also be knocked out of contention because the author doesn’t go into whether artists are finding “new ways to share their music with the masses”; he instead discusses how copyright protections are intended to help recording companies maintain control of music distribution to the fullest extent possible. Choice (E) also refers to the artist’s creative ways to avoid technological and legal controls rather than the creativity associated with producing the artwork itself. Choice (A) is your best option, justified by the author’s statement that “the benefits of copyright law in the contemporary marketplace tend to accrue to the recording industry, not to the struggling garage band.”
E. For this reading comprehension inference question, you need to determine what the final sentence implies about recording-industry executives. The final sentence mentions that if it were possible, executives would try to stop unauthorized singalongs. This shows that the author thinks that executives will go to any length to control the distribution of music. Choices (B) and (C) paint the executives in a positive light, which is certainly not warranted by the last sentence. You can also eliminate Choice (D) because the last sentence has nothing to do with whether executives like or dislike music. Choice (A) is closer, but the sentence doesn’t talk about making money from singalongs so much as stopping them altogether. That makes Choice (E) the correct answer.
A. This sentence-correction question tests your knowledge of verb forms and grammatical construction. You’re not dealing with word choice, because all the answer choices include a form of the verb to bring. Choices (C) and (D) introduce the pronoun it, which has no clear reference, so they’re not right. Choice (B) applies a singular verb to a plural subject. Choice (E) includes and, which would make the comma in the non-underlined part of the sentence improper. The sentence is best as is.
A. This critical reasoning question asks you to draw an inference from the passage. Inference questions generally focus on a premise rather than on a conclusion. The passage implies that the patent office wants to promote invention, so Choice (B) doesn’t work. Choices (D) and (E) express opinions that aren’t presented in the passage. Although you may agree that the genome shouldn’t be patented or that people who are concerned about patents aren’t well informed, the question doesn’t ask you for your opinion.

Don’t choose answer choices to critical reasoning questions just because you agree with them. Base your answers on the opinions stated or implied by the paragraph.

Because Choice (C) contains the word always, this choice leaves no room for exception and can’t be a logical inference. The answer must be Choice (A), because it flows logically from the first premise and isn’t stated in the passage.
B. Choice (A) sounds more like an additional argument in favor of gerrymandering creating an “unnecessary and harmful divide between parties,” so that answer can’t be right since it strengthens rather than weakens the original argument. The same can be said for Choice (D); if folks are electing very similar politicians in their districts and those politicians share the same ideals, this would likely contribute to the divide between parties and help eliminate the political “middle.” Choice (E) is irrelevant; that both sides can take part in gerrymandering doesn’t mean they do or that they do at the same time. So, that argument also falls flat. You’ve narrowed the options down to either Choice (B) or (C). Of the two, Choice (B) is the stronger option. It presents an alternative to gerrymandering as the reason that certain districts tend to elect people from the same party over and over again, which arguably contributes to a sharper divide between parties. Choice (B) is your best bet.
E. Choice (E) is best because it presents a logical, alternative explanation for the statistics surrounding Americans with vision problems. It isn’t screen time that causes the spike in problems but, instead, a large population of aging Americans. Choice (A) would strengthen rather than weaken the initial argument, so you know that one can’t be right. Choice (B) is a possibility, but you can assume the GMAT is probably looking for something a bit more precise. Choice (C) is irrelevant; the argument is specific to American vision problems, so it doesn’t matter how much time people in other parts of the world spend looking at screens. Choice (D), too, is irrelevant. What people do to reduce vision issues doesn’t call into question the role of screen time in vision problems.
C. The final sentence-correction question contains an improper comparison. The term more requires a comparison between two things (more Americans thought of themselves as British citizens than what?). The sentence doesn’t offer a comparison. Because there’s an error, eliminate Choice (A). Choice (B) uses the term fewer, which also requires a comparison, and this answer choice changes the meaning of the sentence. Choice (D) gets rid of more but introduces the pronoun them, which doesn’t have a clear reference and, therefore, can’t be right. Choice (E) also contains a pronoun error: its inclusion of the first-person pronoun we. We weren’t around during the American Revolution, so Choice (E) is incorrect. Choice (C) changes more to most, so it eliminates the comparison problem and is the correct answer.