SOLUTIONS
Subject Verb Agreement
1.
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The original sentence supplies the plural verb construction “have risen” for the singular subject
“price.” Further, the phrase “have risen and will continue to rise” is redundant. Finally, the
original sentence uses the plural pronoun “their” to refer to the singular subject
“management.”
(A) This choice is incorrect as it repeats the original sentence.
(B) This answer corrects the pronoun issue, but suffers from the lack of agreement between
the subject “the price” and the verb “have risen.” This answer choice also retains the
redundant and wordy construction “have risen and will continue to rise.”
(C) CORRECT. This answer replaces the redundant construction “have risen and will continue
to rise” with the more concise “will continue to rise.” This change is possible without any loss
of content, since using “will continue to rise” already implies that the price of oil and fuel
components has been increasing to date. Further, this modification resolves the subject-verb
agreement issue in the original sentence. Finally, this answer choice replaces the plural
pronoun “their” with the article “the,” thus remedying the original lack of agreement between
the noun “management” and pronoun “their.”
(D) While supplying the appropriate singular verb “has risen” for the singular subject “the
price,” this choice is wordy and retains the incorrect pronoun “their” from the original
sentence.
(E) While resolving the issues of redundancy and subject-verb agreement, this answer uses
the plural pronoun “their” to refer to the singular noun “management."
2.
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The original sentence states that "a higher interest rate is only one of the factors...that
keeps..." The clause "that keeps the housing market from spiraling out of control" is describing
the word "factors." Since "factors" is plural noun and "keeps" agrees with singular nouns, we
need to find a sentence that replaces "keeps"...