Kaplan GRE ® GMAT Exams Writing Workbook by Kaplan

Author:Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Kaplan Publishing
Published: 2008-12-22T16:00:00+00:00

PRACTICE ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Practice 1

Paragraph 1

(1) The advice given to the company managers that hiring additional workers will result in a larger number of houses being built contains a fallacy of exclusion. (2) Several pieces of vital information are not taken into considerationin the reasoning that more workers means morehouses built, and a moment’s thought reveals that manyfactors other than merely the number of workersdeterminesthe answer to the question of how many houses willbe built. (3) For example, if the construction companydoesn’t have enough construction equipment or tools toequip more workers, then extra workers won’t help regardless.(4) If there aren’t enough building sites available,enough raw materials, or sufficient infrastructure to supportadditional workers, then hiring more workers mightwell be just a waste of money. (5) The whole question ofdiminishing returns in increasing staff size is not considered by this line of reasoning at all.

(1) Advice is the noun; advise is a verb.

More additional is an example of pleonasm (redundancy).

Advice is the singular subject of the sentence, so it takes the singular verb form, contains.

(2) Extremely vital is redundant.

This sentence is a run-on—two independent clauses joined by a comma with no conjunction. Fix it by either adding a conjunction or by making it into two sentences (or possibly by swapping the comma for a semicolon).

Moment’s is possessive here, so takes an apostrophe.

Reasoning is repetitive with the preceding clause, so swap it out for another term such as thought.

The sentence compares the number of workers with the other factors, so the comparative than is required.

The final question is embedded, so it takes a period rather than a question mark.

(3) Omit the slash as a substitute for the conjunction or in essays.

Workers is a simple plural here, so no apostrophe is necessary.

Always use regardless rather than irregardless.

(4) The sentence here refers to building locations (sites), not things seen (sights).

The middle term in this series violates parallelism in the original, creating confusion.

The future conditional subjunctive here takes the verb be rather than been.

(5) The phrase in increasing staff size modifies the question of diminishing returns, so put the modifier next to the thing it modifies in order to avoid confusion.

Paragraph 2

(1) While the school board’s argument that eating breakfast in the school breakfast program is related to a reduction of absenteeism may be convincing, (2) the conclusion that forcing more students to eat breakfast on the school program will cause a decrease in absences is unwarranted. (3) The statistics show a correspondence that is far from clear enough to assume causation. (4) The attendance of students at the school-sponsored breakfast program and at subsequent classes might both result from a third, unexamined cause that creates the observed effect. (5) For example, students who eat school breakfasts every day might just happen to be the ones who go to bed early [no comma] and therefore are up in time for both the breakfast and for classes. (6) Or perhaps the students with better attendance experience a different kind of parent supervision that contributes to both their better diet and their improved attendance.

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