The Governor's Approval Ratings has been Extremely High Until a Series GMAT Sentence Correction

Question: The governor's approval ratings has been extremely high until a series of corruption scandals rocked his administration last year.

1. has been extremely high until
2. have been extremely high until
3. had been extremely high until
4. were extremely high as
5. had been extremely high as

“The Governor's Approval Ratings has been Extremely High Until a Series” - is a GMAT sentence correction question. These sorts of questions possess grammatical errors in the underlined portion of the sentence, and the candidate needs to pick the correct statement. The GMAT sentence correction section detects the grammatical skills of the candidates. It enables the candidate to identify basic grammatical errors. It encourages the candidates to go through intricate and lengthy sentences precisely. GMAT sentence correction is part of GMAT verbal.

Answer: C
Explanation: In this GMAT sentence correction question, the following errors are addressed:

• Verb
• Tense
• Grammatical errors

Here are the steps to solve this specific question:

Step 1: Carefully read the original sentence to check for errors.
The candidate must ensure that an underlined verb coincides with its subject and is in the appropriate tense whenever it appears in a sentence. The singular verb "has been" in the underlined section above contradicts with the plural subject "ratings." Additionally, the verb is in the incorrect tense; the phrase "has been" implies that the ratings are still high, but the sentence says otherwise. Answer option (A) is the one that can instantly rule out.

Step 2: Review and Sort the Answer Options
Now is the moment to search for a divide among the possible answers. As it can be seen, there are several distinct verb tenses at the beginning of the choices: two "had been," one "were," one "have been," and one "has been." That divide is not really useful. Look for a split at the ends of the answer selections if they can't discover one at the starts. This is a 3-2 split; answer options (A), (B), and (C) all end with "till," but (D) and (E) both conclude with "as."

Step 3: Remove Options Until Just One Remain
Because the subject, "ratings," is multiple and the verb, "has been," is singular, candidates had to rule out response option (A). But there's also a verb tense problem here. The past perfect tense is used to show that something happened in the past before another event in the past, therefore the right verb tense is "had been extraordinarily high." Prior to scandals "rocking" his government, the governor's popularity in this place was strong. This disqualifies (B) and (D). Option (E) can be disregarded since the notion that the scandals happened before and contributed to the change in the governor's popularity ratings is lost when the preposition is changed from "until" to "as."

For the record, note that this mistake is also present in (D). The GMAT will frequently give the candidate several chances to narrow down her response options. This leaves (C) as the lone perfect response. To confirm, rephrase this decision as follows:

The governor’s approval ratings had been extremely high until a series of corruption scandals rocked his administration last year.

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