How to Approach Meaning-Based Executive Assessment Sentence Correction Questions
For many Executive Assessment test-takers, meaning-based questions are often the single biggest barrier to an elite score on Sentence Correction. The best way to master these SC questions is to think literally, systematically compare answer choices to find meaning differences, avoid grammar-focused tunnel vision, and ignore the myth that you need to “preserve” the meaning of answer choice (A).
While it’s true that thinking about meaning feels far more abstract and challenging than, say, analyzing subject-verb agreement, there are still concrete action steps you can take to improve your results on meaning-based SC questions.
Keep reading to learn six tips for approaching meaning-based Sentence Correction questions on the EA.
1. Zoom out and… um, actually think about meaning on SC questions
If you’re like many hard-working Executive Assessment students, you might already have mastered the key grammar concepts that appear in Sentence Correction questions. When you see a parallelism marker, you know exactly what to do. You eat misplaced modifiers for breakfast. You laugh in the face of faulty comparisons.
But if you’re struggling on meaning-based questions – or on harder SC questions in general – odds are good that you get tunnel vision at times, and miss the big picture of the sentence’s meaning.
In hundreds of EA tutoring sessions, I’ve seen students agonize over an idiomatic construction or obsess over a grammar rule that they think they’re missing. But then after I gently remind them to think about the meaning of the sentence, they’re often quickly able to see why the correct answer is more logical than the alternatives.
The bottom line: you’re only going to notice meaning issues on Sentence Correction if you consciously look for them. Once you’ve eliminated answer choices based on concrete grammar issues, you’ll want to very explicitly remind yourself to consider the logic of the remaining answer choices. After you make the commitment to consider meaning, make sure to read the entire sentence, including the non-underlined portion. Then read it again to make sure you didn’t miss anything.
2. Think Literally on Meaning-Based Sentence Correction Questions
In real life, illogical sentences often make perfect sense to us.
Consider the following:
“It was a situation where Tim was likely to lose his mind, which motivated his kids to sedate him.”
If you don’t think about it too hard, you probably know exactly what the writer intends here: Tim freaked out, so his kids tried to calm him down. In real life, you would probably be fine with the construction of this sentence (though you may or may not think the sentence sounds awkward).
But if we read this sentence literally, we start to see tons of problems:
What does “it” refer to, exactly?
What does it mean to say “a situation where” something happens? A situation isn’t a place, so this makes no sense.
Is “which” describing Tim’s mind? How would Tim’s mind motivate his kids? Via telepathy?
Because the literal interpretation makes no sense, we know that this sentence would be wrong on EA Sentence Correction, even in the absence of any grammatical errors.
The takeaway: in real life, our brains are wonderful at making sense of sentences that are illogical. So when you’re tackling meaning-based Sentence Correction questions on the EA, you’ll want to read literally and pay unusually close attention to anything that might be illogical – even though that’s not the way we would naturally read in real life.
3. Carefully compare differences in SC answer choices on the EA
Once you’ve eliminated everything you can based on grammar or usage errors, you’ll often find that you have two or three answer choices remaining. When this happens, your best bet is to find every little difference between the two answer choices, and systematically compare those choices based on a very literal interpretation of the meaning.
For example, check out these two sentences:
(A) Global warming, a phenomenon that most scientists agree is caused by human beings' burning of fossil fuels, will damage the habitats of millions of migratory birds.
(B) Global warming, which most scientists agree on as a phenomenon caused by human beings who burn fossil fuels, will damage the habitats of millions of migratory birds.
It’s hard to argue that either answer choice has a significant grammar error, so your best bet is to find every difference between the two options to help you spot meaning issues.
The first difference comes right after the comma. In (B), the sentence says that scientists “agree on global warming as a phenomenon…” – and that doesn’t make a ton of sense. Does it mean that scientists agree that global warming exists? Maybe that’s not WRONG, exactly, but (A) seems far more logical: most scientists agree on the cause of global warming, not just the idea that global warming is “a phenomenon.”
Maybe that’s not enough to eliminate (B) by itself, but it certainly gives us some support for (A).
The second difference between the options also points us towards (A). What do scientists believe causes global warming? Is it “human beings” who happen to burn fossil fuels, as (B) suggests? Or is it humans’ act of burning fossil fuels, as (A) states?
(A) makes more sense, right? Humans themselves don’t cause global warming – our behavior (specifically, burning fossil fuels) does.
So whenever you start to feel stuck between two or three answer choices on a EA Sentence Correction question, find EVERY difference between the answer choices, and break them down systematically to help you spot the fine distinctions in meaning.
4. Understand that (A) is NOT Special on EA Sentence Correction
There’s a widespread myth that your goal is to preserve the “original meaning” of the sentence, and that, if an answer choice changes that meaning, it’s wrong.
Unfortunately, this is nonsense. If (A) is illogical, you’d want an answer with a different meaning, right?
So please ignore gimmicks like this. You have five answer choices on EA Sentence Correction questions, and your job is to select the best of the bunch. Contrary to popular belief, there’s absolutely nothing special about answer choice (A).
5. Clarity and Concision can “Break Ties” on Meaning-Based SC Questions
If you’ve spent much time on GMAT Club, you’ve probably seen posts in which we dismiss the idea that an SC answer choice should be eliminated quickly because it’s “wordy.” After all, sometimes the correct answer ends up being the wordiest of the bunch! Clearly, a sentence that’s “wordy” but grammatically correct is better than a short sentence that’s filled with errors.
While it’s true that you don’t want to use this as a decision point early in your process, one of the keys to EA Sentence Correction is knowing how to set priorities. If you’ve eliminated the answer choices with definitive grammar issues and ditched the options that are illogical – but you still have multiple answers remaining – now it’s reasonable to consider wordiness as a tie-breaker, since a clear and concise sentence is better than a wordy and confusing one, all else being equal.
Just make sure that you save this step for last. Too often, test-takers hastily eliminate answer choices because they’re long, or because they “sound unclear” or “sound wordy.” Instead, think of clarity and concision as your last resort on EA SC questions, after you’ve already systematically analyzed the answer choices based on both grammar and meaning.
6. Watch this video on how to improve at the hardest meaning-based SC questions
Now that you’ve read about some of the fundamental principles for mastering meaning-based SC questions, here’s a video that will help you address the very toughest Sentence Correction questions that appear on the EA: