Hi Ron,

With choice B, I thought you would say " Whether "an" archaeologist, treasure hunter, or sport diver". I see B is the best answer for all the reasons mentioned above but I felt uncomfortable picking it since it felt incomplete without the "an" after whether.

-Raj.

take this as a lesson about the usage considered acceptable on the test; sometimes the conventions are more than a little surprising.

remember, it's their playground, and they make the rules. the best you can hope to do is stay abreast of those rules.

you may have a point, but that consideration isn't terribly important in this problem: the choices using the active voice are all grammatically WRONG.
the antecedent of "which" doesn't make any sense in (a) or (d) - "coastal waters" and "the coast", respectively - and there's no antecedent at all for "it" in choice (e).

the best reason to prefer the passive voice in this sentence is that there isn't really a viable subject if we use the active voice. i.e., what actually "exposes" the remains to turbulence? uh... we don't really know. but we do know that they are exposed; hence the passive voice.

My reasoning for choosing B instead of A was regarding the use of "which", different from the reason above.

I deduced that "there should be a THAT" instead of a "which" since the clause after that has importance. So I eliminated A.

actually, neither "that" nor "which" will work here. remember, the noun has to touch the modifier..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Hi Stacey,

I had a question.I was confused between a and b but then I knew a was wrong.However with b too, the sentence ends with whether.Shouldn't "whether" introduce a clause.Is b fully correct?

Thanks,
Khushbu.

OFFICIALLY CORRECT ANSWERS ARE CORRECT!
do not question officially correct answers!
far too many students on this forum make the mistake of questioning the correct answers; please note that doing so is a complete waste of your time and effort. i.e., exactly 0% of the time that you spend posting "isn't this official answer wrong?" is productive, and exactly 100% of that time is wasted.

"is this correct?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always yes.
"is this wrong?" / "is this X type of error?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always no.

instead, the questions you should be asking about correct official answers, if you don't understand them, are:
"why is this correct?"
"how does this work?"
"what understanding am i lacking that i need to understand this choice?"

this is a small, but hugely significant, change to your way of thinking -- you will suddenly find it much easier to understand the format, style, and conventions of the official problems if you dispose of the idea that they might be wrong.

--

if you are surprised by this problem, the correct way to react is “hey, i just learned something new about the word whether.” as always, it is pointless to ask whether the official answer is actually wrong; the answer is no, the official answer is not wrong.