<p>skygirl--</p>
<p>the first thing to remember on the SAT writing section is that you only need to concern yourself with "SAT grammar" specifically, not with general grammar. while the structure of this sentence is complex, the actual crux of the question comes down to whether or not you can say "was" with a plural/compound subject (you can't). more on that in a minute.</p>
<p>here's a fairly detailed explanation of what's going on in the sentence, without getting into the linguistic technicalities of the whole thing. the "base sentence"--that is, the straightforward expression of the idea underlying this sentence--is this:</p>
<p>"The commission also supported the proposed health clinics and the proposed center to distribute information on job-training opportunities."</p>
<p>The base sentence has been modified to use the passive voice:</p>
<p>"The proposed health clinics and the proposed center to distribute information on job-training opportunities were also supported by the commission."</p>
<p>The sentence has also been modified to place the ideological stress on the clinics and the center--that is, to make these ideas occur at the end of the sentence:</p>
<p>"Also supported by the commission were the proposed health clinics and the proposed center to distribute information on job-training opportunities."</p>
<p>and there you have it. so that's what's going on with the structure of the sentence.</p>
<p>but i want to stress that you don't necessarily need to be able to unwravel the sentence like that in order to know the answer to the question.</p>
<p>the answer choices for the question are the following:</p>
<p>(Also supported) <a>
(was) <b>
(center) <c>
(on job-training) <d>
(no error) <e></e></d></c></b></a></p><a><b>
<p>all we need to do is go through each answer choice and see if we can find anything wrong with it.</p>
<p>(a), "also supported," gives us a verb phrase to think about. this part of the verb phrase has no number, so we don't need to think about whether it's plural or singular. is there a thing in the sentence that could be doing the supporting? yes--the commission. (a) seems fine.</p>
<p>(b), "was," gives us a singular verb phrase to think about. "was" has to have a subject, so where is that subject? we might identify "clinics," which is a plural noun, and "center." "clinics" and "center" are more than one thing, and will therefore require a plural verb, which means "was" doesn't agree with them. the only other singular noun in the sentence is "commission," and since that's the object of the preposition "by" and there's no relative pronoun here, "comission" can't be the subject of "was." this means "was" has something wrong with it.</p>
<p>(c) is fine. it's just a singular noun with nothing else much going on.</p>
<p>(d) is fine as well. "job-training" is an appropriate modifier for "information," and "on" is an appropriate preposition here (used in the sense of "about").</p>
<p>so we can tell that "was" has something wrong with it just because it requires a singular subject and no suitable singular subject exists in the sentence.</p>
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