WHEN DRAFTING THE DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS THAT WAS ADOPTED

[Guest]

[editor: there is another post about this problem here:
when-drafting-the-declaration-of-sentiments-that-t8828.html]

WHEN DRAFTING THE DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS THAT WAS ADOPTED AT THE SENECA FALLS WOMEN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION IN 1848, INCLUDED IN IT BY THE AUTHOR, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, WAS A CALL FOR FEMALE ENFRANCHISEMENT.

THE ENTIRE SENTENCE ABOVE IS UNDERLINED. GMAT PREP EXAM 1

THE CORRECT ANSWER IS E (highlight to see answer).

WHEN ELIZABETH CADY STANTON DRAFTED THE DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS THAT WAS ADOPTED AT THE SENECA FALLS WOMEN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION IN 1848, SHE INCLUDED IN IT A CALL FOR FEMALE ENFRANCHISEMENT.
2 QUESTIONS:
1. DOES THERE NOT NEED TO BE A CONJUNCTION IN BETWEEN 1848 AND SHE IF NOT WHY? IS IT NOT A RUN-ON SENTENCE. WHEN IS IT OK AND WHEN IS IT NOT.
2. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE USE OF ADOPTED AT OR ADOPTED BY?

THANKS YOUR INPUT IS GREATLY APPRECIATED

[rfernandez]

For future reference, please post the entire question, including all answer choices. Thanks.

1. DOES THERE NOT NEED TO BE A CONJUNCTION IN BETWEEN 1848 AND SHE IF NOT WHY? IS IT NOT A RUN-ON SENTENCE. WHEN IS IT OK AND WHEN IS IT NOT.

This is not a run-on sentence, nor does it require a conjunction. What we have is two clauses: an independent one and a dependent one. Consider this example:
When I floss my teeth, my gums often bleed.


The dependent clause is "When I floss my teeth" -- notice that this by itself cannot stand alone as a sentence. The independent clause is "my gums often bleed" -- this clause could stand alone as a sentence. A comma can connect independent and dependent clauses.

If you have two independent clauses, then you need to connect them with a conjunction or an appropriate punctuation mark.

2. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE USE OF ADOPTED AT OR ADOPTED BY?

The difference is in the meaning. "Adopted by" is used in a passive verb construction: after the "by" comes the person or entity that did the adoption.
The new code of conduct was adopted by the employees, albeit reluctantly.

"Adopted at" refers to the venue or event that marks where or when the adoption occurred. The sentence you gave uses it in this sense.

[cesar.rodriguez.blanco]

What are differences between C and E? Why C is wrong?

[nanu.nantaki]

Even I'm curious to know why C is wrong, could someone please elaborate. Thanks.

[RonPurewal]

What are differences between C and E? Why C is wrong?

please post the answer choices for this question!
thanks.

(you are currently asking about answer choices that are not even present. we do not have a bank of these questions on hand - and, even if we did, the thread would still be of no help to other posters without answer choices.)

[tankobe]

What are differences between C and E? Why C is wrong?

please post the answer choices for this question!
thanks.

(you are currently asking about answer choices that are not even present. we do not have a bank of these questions on hand - and, even if we did, the thread would still be of no help to other posters without answer choices.)

the answer choices:
(A) When drafting the Declaration of Sentiments that was adopted at the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention in 1848, included in it by the author, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a call for female enfranchisement.
(B) Including a call for female enfranchisement, a draft of the Declaration of Sentiments was adopted at the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention in 1848 that Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote.
(C) When the Declaration of Sentiments drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton was adopted at the Seneca Falls Women's Convention in 1848, a call for female enfranchisement had been included in it.
(D) A call for female enfranchisement, included in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's draft of the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848, that was adopted by the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention.
(E) When Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the Declaration of Sentiments that was adopted at the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention in 1848, she included in it a call for female enfranchisement.

[tiwarianizer]

I will try to answer, though expert's comments are welcome.

dependent clause modifies "the Declaration of Sentiments "....not "a call for female enfranchisement" present at the start in choice C.
More ever "it" is ambiguous also.

[ranjeet1975]

There are only two runner; A and E

Though E is right, why A is wrong.

[StaceyKoprince]

Thanks for posting the answers, tankobe.

Whoever posted originally, first, please make sure to follow forum guidelines when posting; the full text of the problem must be posted. Second, please do not post in all capital letters. Use normal text when posting.

<When drafting the declaration of sentiments> [that was adopted at the convention], included <in it by the author>, <ECS>, was a call <for female enfranchisement>.

Core of the sentence: Included was a call.
Everything else (the stuff in the brackets): modifiers.

Are the modifiers placed correctly relative to the core and the other modifiers?

What does the first modifier modify? "When drafting the declaration of sentiments..." Who or what is this referring to? This is talking about someone drafting the declaration, so it would have to refer to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. ECS is a noun, so the noun modifier should touch the noun. It doesn't; that's enough to eliminate A.

You guys are asking about C and E. Here's C:
<when the declaration was adopted>, a call <mod> had been included <mod>.

This sentence tells us that the Declaration was adopted in 1848. It also mentions that the declaration was "drafted" by ECS and that "a call had been included." Here's the problem. "had been included" is past perfect, which means that "a call" happened before anything mentioned in simple past tense. So, the call happened before it was adopted - that makes sense. But the call also happened before it was drafted. That doesn't make sense. The call would have to have been included in the document at the time that the document was drafted.

That explanation should also allow you to understand why E is right. What do you think?

[hi4apoorva]

Hi Stacey,

I have a question for you,how much time you think one should spend on this question--I was pretty sure I did the previous question wrong and tried to attemp this one..more than 2 minutes..and got it wrong C.
Additionaly,after analysing it I know what did me in I was able to narrow down my response to C and E.To validate that the use of 'Had Been" is correct I checked only the occurenece of another reference past point...never bothered to make sure that there are two Past verbs present..:-(

First lengthy Modifiers,than Confusing Verb Tenses and finally the meaning of the sentence in its entirety..

[RonPurewal]

this problem is fairly lengthy, so you could be forgiven for spending a fair amount of extra time on it. still, even for a rather long SC such as this one, you should probably try to be done with the problem in about 1 min 30 sec -- perhaps an absolute maximum, under ALL conditions, of 2 min (meaning that you QUIT at 2 min, regardless of whether you are finished analyzing the problem).

in general, especially if english is not your first language, you are going to have to make some hard decisions regarding timing on the verbal section. after all, you have the same 75-minute limit as do native speakers of english -- so, if you progress through all three types of verbal questions more slowly than do native speakers, you are going to have to select at least one type of question on which to quit earlier than you would like. otherwise, you won't be able to finish the test.

--

one more piece of advice:

for non-native speakers of english, verb tenses are the single hardest and most subtle aspect of english grammar.

this is actually the case in pretty much all languages of the world -- verb tenses tend to encode incredibly subtle and specific information, information that, frustratingly enough, varies wildly from language to language.
what this means is that, to truly understand the usage of english tenses in full, you actually have to learn to start thinking like a native speaker of english. this is not easy to do. (by contrast, you don't have to think like a native speaker of english to understand things like subject-verb agreement or parallelism; you just have to be able to analyze things with a sufficiently mechanical outlook and with sufficient attention to the semantic meaning of the sentence.)

one tip that can help:
if you get the problem down to two choices, and you are simply DELIBERATING between those two choices, just pick one and move on.
if you have the problem down to two choices, that's already a 50-50 shot; it's not worth the extra time to pore through those two choices over and over again, trying to find something that you didn't see the first 2-3 times.

a note from my empirical experience:
when i've been working with individual students in tutoring, many of them tend to pore over problems for a very long time, reading through the last couple of choices over and over and over and over again. what i've noticed with almost all of these students is that, if they "find" something "wrong" with an answer choice after they have already read through it 3 or more times, then the things they "find" are wrong almost 100% of the time.
this doesn't necessarily mean that the students are missing the problem 100% of the time; indeed, at this point, their overall statistics are indistinguishable from those that would be generated by completely random guessing. rather, the point is that they are not going to see legitimate errors, for the first time, on their 4th, 5th, ... pass through the problem.
this is based on a very large sample size -- i've had a large number of tutoring students -- so you should take this as pretty solid empirical justification for quitting sooner.

Hi Stacey,

I have a question for you,how much time you think one should spend on this question--I was pretty sure I did the previous question wrong and tried to attemp this one..more than 2 minutes..and got it wrong C.
Additionaly,after analysing it I know what did me in I was able to narrow down my response to C and E.To validate that the use of 'Had Been" is correct I checked only the occurenece of another reference past point...never bothered to make sure that there are two Past verbs present..:-(

First lengthy Modifiers,than Confusing Verb Tenses and finally the meaning of the sentence in its entirety..