<p>I took a CB practice test and I got these two questions wrong. Can you tell me why?</p>
<p>1) Eating food that has a high concentration of fat causes essentially the same in the stomach <em>than if you eat</em> too fast</p>
<p>a) than if you eat
b) than to eat
c) as if one eats
d) as eating <- this is the answer
e) as it does when eating <- this is the answer that I put</p>
<p>2) <em>Although the candidate promised both to cut taxes and improve services, he</em> failed to keep either of them after the election</p>
<p>a) Although the candidate promised both to cut taxes and improve services, he
b) The candidate, having promised both to cut taxes and improve services,
^ I thought that this was the answer</p>
<p>c) Although the candidate made promises both to cut taxes and improve services, he
^ this is the answer</p>
<p>d) stupid</p>
<p>e) lame</p>
<p>Why are the above mentioned the answers? Thanks in advance</p>
<p>um, for the first question, you need "as eating" because it maintains the parallelism that was established early in the sentence, b/c it began with "eating..." and u need keep the same verb tense...idk the 2nd one</p>
<p>wooops, i overlooked that, but wordiness is a factor too...the same idea is driven when you simply say "eating" and when you say "as it does when eating"...</p>
<p>i think for number two, getting rid of "although" slightly changes the meaning of the emphasis. it's called an adversative conjunction, according to my english teacher, and i think that maintaining the EXACT meaning of the original sentence is the most important. also in number 1, E is wrong because the antecedent of "it" is eating, which would be "as eating does when eating"--making it very redundant. </p>
<p>First off, the first sentence doesn't even make sense... are you sure you copied it right?</p>
<p>That said, for the first question, the SAT people prefer concise wording. "as eating" and "as it does when eating" mean precisely the same thing, but "as eating" is more concise, so it's correct. Of course, you can't sacrifice meaning/coherence for conciseness... conciseness always comes last.</p>
<p>On the second question, what birk said may be right (I was never formally taught grammar, I just know it well). But I would say that it's because "them" has no antecedent. In the correct answer, "them" is referring to the promises. In your answer, "them" isn't referring to anything.</p>
<p>I just noticed bpatel already said what I said about number one. Oh well... enjoy.</p>