Pg 55....
She argues that the agency acts with reckless abandon and with disregard for human life and property, and that it should therefore be shut down.

My question is, IS the last that required?????
I can write, She argues that he is good and he is intelligent,
Why is the last that needed.

She argues that the agency acts with reckless abandon and with disregard for human life and property, and that it should therefore be shut down.

My question is, IS the last that required?????
I can write, She argues that he is good and he is intelligent,
Why is the last that needed.


I think it is because:

She argues that (the agency acts with reckless abandon and with disregard for human life and property), and that (it should therefore be shut down.)

The statements mentioned in the brackets are two different things. She argues that the agency acts (with reckless abondon) and (with disregard for human life and property)(parallelism maintained), and that(argues) it (agency) should be shut down.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to discuss how to deal with parallelism in general in addition to answering your question..

In some cases the “that” is optional at the beginning of the second parallel element; both of these sentences are correct:

I am convinced that apples taste good and carrots taste gross.
I am convinced that apples taste good and that carrots taste gross.

Any time you see parallelism, you need to identify the parallel marker (in this case “and”) and what the parallel elements are. Parallelism arises when a sentence splits into two parallel tracks, so you will want to identify the split point. In my first example, the sentence split after the word “that”, and the parallel elements are “apples taste good” and “carrots taste gross”. In the second example, the sentence splits after the word “convinced”, and the parallel elements are “that apples taste good” and “that carrots taste gross”. Both of these are correct, which means you should be careful to avoid the mistake of thinking the first sentence is wrong because it doesn’t contain a “that”. Your job is not to decide what the parallelism should look like and then get rid of the ones that don’t match. Instead, you must consider each variation you are given and decide if any of them are wrong..

HOWEVER, in the sentence on p40, the “that” is required in order to avoid giving the sentence an unauthorized meaning. Without the “that”, we might interpret everything after the comma as an independent clause because of the “,and” (remember that “,and” often introduces an independent clause). In real life the version of the sentence without the “that” would be grammatically correct even though it conveys a different meaning, BUT the absence of “that” turns the final clause into an opinion statement. The GMAT does not put opinion statements into SC problems, so we would know to eliminate any answer choice that does that..

Please note that I am willing to be proven wrong on that claim that the GMAT does not use opinions in SC (students and other instructors - let me know if you find one), but regardless the “that” is still required in this example to convey the proper meaning..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor