hello there welcome to egmat where we solve every sc question by using one unified approach
which we call the meaning based approach my name is shraddha jayaswal i'm a senior verbal
sme at eg matt and today i will show you how to solve this difficult question pretty easily
not too much of a brave brain here okay so in our three-step meaning based approach the first
step is the meaning analysis in which we try to understand the meaning of the sentence by breaking
the sentence down into smaller chunks as you can see on the screen okay so let's get started
let's read the sentence now the sentence starts by saying the prime lending rate is a key rate
in the economy so what it is saying that prime lending rate or p l r is a very important rate
in the economy okay let's read further not only are the interest rates on most loans to small
and medium-sized businesses tied to the prime okay so this part of the sentence is telling us
that the interest rates on most loans to small and medium-sized businesses are tied to this p l
r so basically what i understand is that this part of the sentence is actually
substantiating or supporting what is being said right in the beginning of the sentence so plr is
an important rate and how it is so by the way the interest rates on most loans to small and medium
businesses are try are tied to plr reading further but also on a growing number of consumer loans
including home equity loans so this part of the sentence presents the second aspect of of the
meaning to substantiate this importance of plr what is it saying that also the interest rates
on a growing number of consumer loans are also tied to plr and by the way these consumer loans
also include home equity loans all right so when we sum it up all we understand that the sentence
says that the plr is a very important rate in the economy and to substantiate this point the author
says i'm sorry about that the author says that two kinds of interest rates are connected to the plr
the first one is the interest rates on most loans to small and medium businesses
and the second kind of interest rates are the interest rates on a growing number of consumer
loans that include home equity loans okay so the way the sentence is written it's very very logical
no issues whatsoever in understanding the meaning again if i only look at the skeleton of the
sentence i understand that the first part of this sentence presents let me go back in here the first
part of the sentence uh presents a statement and this statement is backed up by these two points
in the sentence so pretty much clear now that we understand the logical meaning of the sentence
so well let's move on to our error analysis step in this step we try to figure out the
grammatical errors in the sentence now um one grammatical error which is very very blatant
in this sentence is that this sentence uses what we call a dual word parallelism marker which is
not only but also all right and we understand that when we use a dual word marker
both these markers must be followed by identical grammatical structures so let's see if that is
happening in this sentence or not for not only we see that it is followed by a clause are the
interest rates on most loans to small and medium-sized businesses tied to the prime right
so we have a clause because this is my subject and our tied is my verb right what's happening with
but also but also is actually followed by a prepositional phrase because it starts with
this preposition on and so we understand that this prepositional phrase is not at all parallel with
the the clause that we see after not only so grammatically this choice is incorrect
so meaning is clear but the grammar of this sentence is absolutely off so let's now take a
look at other answer choices and figure out which answer choice is the correct one well we know that
choice a is incorrect because my parallelism is not right after not only and but also
choice b indeed is the correct answer choice here as we see tied to the prime a slight structural
change if you compare it with choice a but this structural change actually makes the sentence
grammatical and logical it says tied to the prime are the interest rates not only on most loans
to small and medium businesses but also on a growing number of consumer loans so after
not only we have the prepositional phrase because it starts with the preposition on and after but
also we again have a prepositional phrase as this phrase starts with a preposition so the
meaning is absolutely clear and the grammar is perfect in choice b so this is our correct
answer choice however we will still take a look at the other answer choices and make sure that they
are incorrect at least we figure out the solid errors in those three answer choices so let's
take a look at choice c needless to say choice c again violates the uh grammatical parallelism
after in the phrases after not only and but also why because not only is followed by on most loans
a prepositional phrase but this preposition on is now missing after but also because it is now only
followed by but also a growing number of consumer loans which is a noun entity so choice c is also
incorrect what's happening in choice d the same error of grammatical parallelism
not only is now followed by a noun phrase which is the interest rates but but also
is followed by a prepositional phrase which starts with the preposition on and so my
parallelism is violated in choice d as well choice e we see the same error one more time
not only is followed by the prepositional phrase on most loans but this on is missing after choice
sorry after but also so choice e is also out so as we figured out earlier choice b indeed is the
correct answer for this question pretty simple if we focused at the right portion of the sentence
you know this sentence was really really easy to solve without wasting too much of time
on this so with this now we come to our takeaways we must read our sentence slowly
in smaller chunks to understand the meaning communicated by the sentence and this takeaway
is applicable to each and every essay problem this should be our habit to read the sentence
for the first time really slowly so that we understand what it's trying to tell us next
in sentence with complex structures try to locate the verb first and then find its doer to identify
the correct subject or pair and the subject verb is the basic building block of a sentence and
why i have incorporated this take away here i've done so because if you remember in the second part
of our sentence we use the inverted subject verb pair if i were to take you back in my sentence
if you take a look at here in this sentence what we see after colon is that not only are
the interest rates on most loans whatever tied to the prime right so here the structure is inverted
subject verb structure where verb actually appears before the subject which is generally
not the case with the sentences right so if you find such structures in other other questions
make sure that you first identify the verb and then you find the doer of that action that will
that will help you understand the meaning communicated by the sentence better
last but not the least whenever we use a dual word parallelism marker in a sentence we must make sure
that both these markers are followed by exact same grammatical entities and in this sentence it was
so so evident that only the correct answer choice had this thing going on and that's why eliminate
eliminating other answer choices was so easy so with this we've come to an end of this solution
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