A different variety of giant tortoise can be found on every

[jnelson0612]

Yea, I'm also a little confused by the problem's usage of "a variety of", I think in this context, this phrase should be followed by a plural noun (if it is countable) as what it means.

And I think the subject should be that plural noun, not "variety", similar to "a number of"

Am I right?

I agree that "a variety of" should be followed by a plural noun, but I think "variety" would be the subject in a sentence like this one:

A variety of flowers is in the bouquet.

[violetwind]

Yea, I'm also a little confused by the problem's usage of "a variety of", I think in this context, this phrase should be followed by a plural noun (if it is countable) as what it means.

And I think the subject should be that plural noun, not "variety", similar to "a number of"

Am I right?

I agree that "a variety of" should be followed by a plural noun, but I think "variety" would be the subject in a sentence like this one:

A variety of flowers is in the bouquet.

Thank you Jamie, I see~

[RonPurewal]

good stuff

[healthy312]

1# so, can i conclude that beyond the construct you put, each must refer to a singlar NOUN?

if "each" is a standalone pronoun, then i think it will refer to a plural noun in the vast majority of cases -- because "each" only makes sense in contexts that involve two or more things.

the construction "each NOUN" is singular, but that's an altogether different construction.

Ron, could you please advise why D is wrong? Why we cannot use "all" ?

[RonPurewal]

focus on the more straightforward eliminations first.

choice D contains "their", which stands for... well, nothing, because there's no plural noun for the animals.
wrong.
done.

(the issue with "all" is essentially the same, but pronoun issues are reliably black-and-white.)

[RonPurewal]

^^ note what happened there, because it's a REALLY big deal.

• you're so concerned with a relatively subtle concept...
• ...that you missed one of the most basic, black-and-white concepts in all of SC (= "they" needs a plural noun).

if you find this happening more than a couple of times, then, unless you focus more on priorities, your SC performance will actually get worse as you learn more things.

see, there are only a handful of MAJOR concepts in SC.
namely, you can solve %90 or more of the problems using parallelism, subject-verb agreement, pronouns, overall sentence structure, modifier choice, placement (of words/phrases that are moved around from choice to choice), and basic verb tenses. (of course, this list includes the effects of all these on meaning, too.)

if you learn additional concepts, you MUST NOT allow them to dilute your focus on these essentials.

[RonPurewal]

in other words, you need to think like an emergency-room doctor.

when a patient comes in, what do you check first?
heartbeat, temperature, blood pressure, injuries, consciousness.

if you learn 1,000,000 other possible signs of disease/trauma, what do you check first?
well...
...heartbeat, temperature, blood pressure, injuries, consciousness.

the point is that, if you were to lose ANY degree of focus on these issues because you were thinking about other, more minor, issues instead, then... you'd be a bad doctor.
worse, in fact, than someone who doesn't know anything other than those five big things.

you wouldn't be bad because you had learned more things. rather, you'd be bad because of HOW you had absorbed those things--in other words, because you let them interfere with your focus on things that are clearly more important.

SC is the same deal, except with the major topics above substituted for "heartbeat, temperature, blood pressure, injuries, consciousness".

[RonPurewal]

the last consequence here is that, if you have a stubborn tendency to see everything as equally high-priority, you should STOP studying SC as soon as you've learned to see the fundamentals listed above, and, while reading the forum, you should IGNORE the discussion of anything less fundamental.

thought experiment: put yourself in the role of the ER doctor, as described in my last post.
if you learned a ton of other signs of medical trouble, would you pay less attention to those big ones? if so, i'm talking to you here.

equally important, by "stubborn" i mean that you would have extreme difficulty changing this way of thinking. if you're adaptable, then this isn't an issue.

incidentally, i find that this problem is especially acute among software engineers, whose (current) profession fundamentally depends upon the notion that "everything is priority #1". (if you're debugging a program, you don't separate the bugs into high-priority bugs and lower-priority bugs; you try to get rid of ALL of them.)

[healthy312]

the last consequence here is that, if you have a stubborn tendency to see everything as equally high-priority, you should STOP studying SC as soon as you've learned to see the fundamentals listed above, and, while reading the forum, you should IGNORE the discussion of anything less fundamental.

thought experiment: put yourself in the role of the ER doctor, as described in my last post.
if you learned a ton of other signs of medical trouble, would you pay less attention to those big ones? if so, i'm talking to you here.

equally important, by "stubborn" i mean that you would have extreme difficulty changing this way of thinking. if you're adaptable, then this isn't an issue.

incidentally, i find that this problem is especially acute among software engineers, whose (current) profession fundamentally depends upon the notion that "everything is priority #1". (if you're debugging a program, you don't separate the bugs into high-priority bugs and lower-priority bugs; you try to get rid of ALL of them.)

Ron , thank you so much for you to teach me the most important principles and priorities I need to focus on . I am adaptable and will definitely keep " parallelism, subject-verb,basic tense, pronouns,modifier, " in my mind as the first priority.

I will try my best to be the doctor focusing on the major problems...

I understood this question, thank you !

[RonPurewal]

you might be wondering why the gmat, a test for future business managers, features SC as such a large component.

if you are wondering about this, then you're right to wonder about it! after all, business managers are a population that's notorious for lacking language skills. (i've NEVER met a good businessperson who is also an above-average writer.) so, the inclusion of SC is, in a sense, ironic.

there are 3 main reasons:

1/
formal written english is familiar to everyone taking this exam.
the gmat crowd is VERY diverse, so there are very few subjects that don't introduce a bias toward (or against) some group. formal written english--which is obviously familiar to anyone aspiring to attend a US business school, and which has NO native speakers**--is one of those few, so it's tested.
(incidentally, this is the same reason why the gmat tests math up to early high-school algebra and geometry: because everyone has seen it.)

2/
most of the major topics exist, in some form, in just about every language in the world.
while the specifics are different, EVERY language in the world has things like parallelism, sentence structure, placement, and agreement.

3/
(the reason why i'm talking about this here)
SC is a good way of testing whether you can prioritize key ideas.
this ^^ is the real reason why SC is on this exam.
if you're a business manager, you need to ignore 99 things for every 1 to which you actually pay attention. if you try to think about ALL THE THINGS, then...
...(a) your business will probably go bankrupt (or will fail in some other way, e.g., your key employees quit because they're sick of being micromanaged),
and
...(b) you will be so stressed that you'll burn out and die at an early age. (WHOA SO SERIOUS, but... yes, serious.)
so, they've made SC into an ingenious little microcosm of this situation. there are a small-ish handful of key notions--most of which CANNOT be memorized, because they appear in so many different forms--and a much larger number of irrelevant distractions.




**actually, there are a FEW "native speakers" of written english--specifically, people who have been deaf from birth (and who thus do not have a spoken "native language", other than signing).--and, in fact, deaf GMAT takers do indeed perform extremely well on SC.
on the other hand, this group is so small (and so unique) that it is utterly irrelevant to the question of bias on the test.

yes, i just wrote a footnote... on a forum post.
|:

[RonPurewal]

by the way--as for my list of "major topics" above, i'm not making that up at random.
go to the back of the OG, and look at the bold-faced topics for the SC problems (in the answer keys). basically, those will correspond to the ones i've listed here.
e.g.,
"grammatical construction" = sentence structure
"rhetorical construction" = placement
"logical predication" = basically, situations in which a thing stands for or refers to another thing (mostly pronouns and modifiers, but sometimes other miscellaneous "references")
"parallelism" = ... well, parallelism.
...and so on.

if something doesn't correspond to one of the OG's bold-faced topics, then it's a minor issue!

[healthy312]

by the way--as for my list of "major topics" above, i'm not making that up at random.
go to the back of the OG, and look at the bold-faced topics for the SC problems (in the answer keys). basically, those will correspond to the ones i've listed here.
e.g.,
"grammatical construction" = sentence structure
"rhetorical construction" = placement
"logical predication" = basically, situations in which a thing stands for or refers to another thing (mostly pronouns and modifiers, but sometimes other miscellaneous "references")
"parallelism" = ... well, parallelism.
...and so on.

if something doesn't correspond to one of the OG's bold-faced topics, then it's a minor issue!

Ron, thank you so much! No one before told me the reason why SC is tested for MBA. Now I know it. And I never paid attention to those bold-faced topics in OG and now I will go back to check them. Thank you so much for teaching me the way on how to learn them by using the most effective way !!!

[RonPurewal]

sure.

[sahilk47]

Hi

Is Option E incorrect because of all with their own style of .... vis-a-vis all with their own styles of ...?

Thank you

[RonPurewal]

that's a non-issue in the first place, because 'all with...' is already nonsense.
the whole point of the sentence is that there isn't anything shared by ALL of the tortoises. rather, EACH type of tortoise, individually, has its own style of xxxxx.