<p>After years of practice, this is the hardest question I have ever seen. If you can anwser this question, you should be ready for the May SAT.</p>
<p>Designed by Seattle architect James Cutler, these innovative dwellings are sensitive to their natural setting, [they complement] the wooded outlines of the landscape.</p>
<p>(A) they complement
(B) also they complement
(C) complementing
(D) which complement
(E) and complementing</p>
<p>Thank you :)</p>
<p>Upon rereading, you may not have been actually asking for an answer. 
Silly me.</p>
<p>do you need the explanation to this question?</p>
<p>C ?</p>
<p>Sparkkid1234: Yes please 
</p>
<p>The answer is C. However, I do not understand why D can’t be the answer. </p>
<p>Thank you very much <3</p>
<p>Another question: </p>
<p>Until Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid-1400s, reproducing a book, reproducing a book generally means writing it out again by hand. (a) means writing ©had meant you write (d) meant writing. </p>
<p>I choose choice C because I thought the verb is suppose to be “had” because the event happened before a past event. Can someone explain why C can’t be the answer? </p>
<p>Thank you for your help :)</p>
<p>@cocoamama I believe the answer should be D. Are you sure the official answer is not a typo because choice C happens to be a fragment.</p>
<p>@cocoamama @HaMinhTran hello, i believe that the answer for the 1st question should be C for C is not as obscure as D and certainly contains no grammatical error. Replacing C will not cause fragment in the sentence since “complementing” modifies “dwellings”. C is just a shorter version of the expression “and”. I’m not really good at explaining this type of question so let me write the original version for you: Designed by Seattle architect James Cutler, these innovative dwellings are sensitive to their natural setting AND COMPLEMENT the wooded outlines of the landscape.
D is wrong since the usage of “which” in this context is ambiguous. We do not know whether “which” replaces “natural settings” or “dwellings”. Therefore, “which” is ambiguous.
+) for the 2nd question, there is a rule, which the SAT uses to test the past perfect tense, that you MUST know. Generally, your saying that past perfect indicates events happening before a past event is correct yet not very useful when being applied to the SAT writing. If the chronological order of the sentence is clear, then both the past tense and past perfect are applicable in the sentence. For example: before my mom got home, i did/had done my homework. However, if the chronological order is not clear, then you must decide whether to use past perfect or past tense. Example: i knew how to love when i met her. Did i know how to love before or after i met her? Therefore the sentence should be rewritten as either “i had known how to love when i met her” or " i knew how to love when i had met her".
After explaining the rule to you, i guess you will now understand why we can use past tense in the question. Also C is wrong since “you” is not mentioned anywhere in the context yet suddenly pops out in the answer choice.
HOPE THAT HELPS</p>
<p>Thanks @Sparkkid1234 
</p>
<p>@HaMinhTran are you vietnamese?</p>
<p>In the second question, there also has to be parallelism.
“reproducing” -> “writing”</p>