Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence: A Little Grammar Does a World of Good (Part 3)
In a way, the environmental movement can still be said to be _________ movement, for while it has been around for decades, only recently has it become a serious organization associated with political parties and platforms.
The above sentence is a SE example from the 5Lb Book of GRE Practice Problems, #89. Today’s discussion explores a third element of sentence structure that is easily overlooked – pronouns! They can greatly help you clarify the meaning of a sentence. (And if you didn’t notice already, do you see what I did in the previous sentence? They – did this pronoun catch your eye?)
The challenge with pronouns isn’t that they are difficult to address, it’s that they are nearly invisible to us, because we have spent our entire adult lives ignoring them when we read and speak. As a test, how many pronouns have I used just in this short paragraph?
Here’s one way I want you to ‘see’ the earlier SE example:
In a way, the environmental movement can still be said to be ________ movement, for while it has been around for decades, only recently has it become a serious organization associated with political parties and platforms.
Stop mid-sentence, and address those ‘it’s. This mental exercise is not about finding the target, clues, and pivots, although you should be aware a pronoun could certainly be the target. This is about making sure you understand the sentence. Mentally, you should read the sentence as
In a way, the environmental movement can still be said to be ________ movement, for while (the environmental movement) has been around for decades, only recently has (the environmental movement) become a serious organization associated with political parties and platforms.
Try this one! (From the GRE 5Lb Book of Practice Problems, Chapter 4 #86)
The Thin Blue Line, a documentary by Errol Morris, is one of a very few movies that has had a tangible effect on the real world; the film managed to ________ its subject, who had been on death row for a crime that Morris proves, fairly definitively, that the man did not commit.
- exculpate
- liberate
- inter
- excuse
- manumit
- vindicate
In this example, we see a pronoun target – “it’s subject” – that we should mentally define as the film’s subject. This is also a call back to my previous two posts on core sentence and descriptors.
So we have a core sentence – the film managed to (do something to) its subject. It also has a descriptor: ‘who had been …’
So we need to choose a word that reflects something a film could do, and that incorporates the descriptor of someone on death row that Morris proves did not commit the crime.
“Exculpate” and “vindicate” are a pair, as are “liberate” and “manumit”. Both pairs make sense with the descriptor (clue) of a man wrongfully convicted. Now which pair best fits the core sentence? Which pair best fits the idea of something a film could do? For me, exculpate and vindicate both contain an idea of changing opinion, while liberate and manumit both contain an idea of tangible effect – physically freeing an individual from prison. The changing opinion better fits the context of what the film itself could do.