SC's Question no - 667 , 668

667). Spanning more than fifty years, Friedrich Muller began his career in an unpromising apprenticeship as a Sanskrit scholar and culminated in virtually every honor that European governments and learned societies could bestow.

(A) Muller began his career in an unpromising apprenticeship as

(B) Muller’s career began in an unpromising apprenticeship as

(C) Muller’s career began with the unpromising apprenticeship of being

(D) Muller had begun his career with the unpromising apprenticeship of being

(E) the career of Muller has begun with an unpromising apprenticeship of

668). South Korea has witnessed the world’s most dramatic growth of Christian congregations; church membership is expanding by 6.6 percent a year, fully two-thirds of the growth coming from conversions rather than the population increasing.

(A) coming from conversions rather than the population increasing

(B) coming from conversions rather than increases in the population

(C) coming from conversions instead of the population’s increasing

(D) is from conversions instead of population increases

(E) is from conversions rather than increasing the population


Answers:

667). (OG 10th Ques no - 235) - OA - B - idiomatic - apprenticeship as

OE: The best answer, B, uses the logical and grammatically correct construction. Spanning more than fifty years, Friedrich Muller's career began . . . and culminated. Note that the noun phrase appearing after the comma is modified by Spanning and serves as the subject of began and culminated. Choice A produces an illogical statement by placing Friedrich Muller in this subject position. Choice C corrects this error but produces an unidiomatic construction by using apprenticeship of being instead of apprenticeship as. Choice D repeats both this error and the subject error of A. D and E needlessly change the simple past tense began to the past perfect had begun and the present perfect has begun, respectively, and E uses apprenticeship of, which is unidiomatic in this context.

A, D - incorrect - modifier error - Spanning more than fifty years should modify Friedrich Muller's career and not Friedrich Muller

C - incorrect - unidiomatic: apprenticeship of being

E - incorrect - awkward, unidiomatic: apprenticeship of; wrong tense: has begun

668). OA - B - parallel - coming from conversions rather than increases in the population

A, C - incorrect - violating parallelism

D - incorrect - use of instead of is wrong: Instead of is a preposition and can introduce only a phrase i.e no verb
http://gmat-grammar.blogspot.com/2006/06/rather-than-vs-instead-of.html

E - incorrect - comma splice run on error
http://gmat-grammar.blogspot.com/2007/01/editing-comma-splices.html