Gmat Sentence Correction 38, 39, 40.

38). The Parthenon was a church from 1204 until 1456, when Athens was taken by General Mohammed the Conqueror, the Turkish sultan, who established a mosque in the building and used the Acropolis as a fortress.

(A) who established a mosque in the building and used the Acropolis as

(B) who, establishing a mosque in the building, used the Acropolis like

(C) who, when he had established a mosque in the building, used the Acropolis like

(D) who had established a mosque in the building, using the Acropolis to be

(E) establishing a mosque in the building and using the Acropolis as


39). The concept of the grand jury dates from the twelfth -century, when Henry II of England ordered panels of common citizens should prepare lists of who were their communities' suspected criminals.

(A) should prepare lists of who were their communities' suspected criminals

(B) would do the preparation of lists of their communities' suspected criminals

(C) preparing lists of suspected criminals in their communities

(D) the preparing of a list of suspected criminals in their communities

(E) to prepare lists of suspected criminals in their communities


40). Chinese, the most ancient of living writing systems, consists of tens of thousands of ideographic characters, each character miniature calligraphic composition inside its own square frame.

(A) each character a miniature calligraphic composition inside its

(B) all the characters a miniature calligraphic ; composition inside their

(C) all the characters a miniature calligraphic composition inside its

(D) every character a miniature calligraphic composition inside their

(E) each character a miniature calligraphic composition inside their

Answers -

38). The best answer is A -- correctly supplies the past tense verbs "established" and "used" to describe two actions performed in 1456; also, it idiomatically employs the phrase "used the Acropolis as a fortress", in which used as means "employed in the capacity of."

B, C -- incorrect -- incorrectly replaces "as" with "like". Furthermore, in
C, "when he had established a mosque" distorts the intended meaning by stating that the first action was completed before the second was begun.

D -- incorrect -- "had established... using" states that Mohammed had already performed the actions before capturing Athens; In addition D includes the unidiomatic construction "using x to be y."

E -- incorrect -- "establishing" and "using" modify Athens, thus
producing an absurd statement.


39). Choice E is best -- the infinitive "to prepare" follows the verb
"ordered", producing the grammatical and idiomatic sequence - x ordered y to do z.

A, B -- incorrect -- "should prepare" in A and "would do" in B produce ungrammatical sequences - x ordered y should/ would do z.

C -- incorrect -- "preparing . . . communities functions" as a participial
phrase is modifying citizens rather than as a verb phrase describing what the citizens were ordered to do.

D -- incorrect -- the construction "ordered panels of common citizens the preparing" is unidiomatic.


40). Choice A is best -- the appositive terms "character" and "composition", both singular, agree in number; both also agree with the singular possessive pronoun "its".

B, C, D, E -- incorrect -- three-way agreement in number stated in choice A is violated.