<p>1- Many Americans are passionate about preserving natural resources, (which makes it a fierce political debate.)
(C) thus the political debate is fierce
(E) a situation that makes for fierce political debate. </p>
<p>The answer is E, but I don't understand; it's like implying that statement " natural resources " is a situation that makes.. etc. Why is C incorrect. </p>
<p>2- A(Although) the 500-mile course covers the B(harshest) part of the Alaskan tundra, C(scores of) dogsled teams D(complete) it successfully each winter since 1925.</p>
<p>For #1, C sounds very strange. E implies that preserving natural resources causes “fierce political debates,” which is correct. </p>
<p>For #2, “complete” should be “have completed.” You can tell from this bit – “each winter since 1925.” Use the present perfect tense when an action has happened in the past and continues to happen.</p>
<p>“A situation that makes for fierce political debate” is an appositive phrase that nominalizes the independent clause of the sentence. In other words “A situation” is a noun renaming “Many Americans are passionate about preserving natural resources.” The sentence is equivalent to</p>
<p>That many Americans are passionate about preserving natural resources makes it a fierce political debate.</p>
<p>In that case I opt to use the pronoun “That” to nominalize the clause. </p>
<p>The sentence as originally written (corresponding to choice (A)) is incorrect because “it” has no clear antecedent. </p>
<p>(C) is wrong because it produces a comma splice (“thus the political debate is fierce” is an independent clause that should be preceded by a semicolon or period) and it’s not clear what “the political debate” is about exactly. When “political debate” is used as a count noun, meaning it could be pluralized, there must be a conveyance about what the debate is: “a political debate over preserving natural resources” perhaps. The use of “the” renders the phrase a count noun, unlike in (E), in which “debate” is an uncountable noun. (One could not say “makes for fierce political debates” without changing the meaning of “debate” from argumentative discourse to a particular, countable instance of said argumentative discourse.)</p>