GMAT - Verbal Sample Questions
Question #1
1a. Explain why the following sentence might be considered incorrect and rewrite the sentence so it is correct: The house was hit by a car last year.
1b. This sentence might be considered incorrect because it uses the passive voice rather than the active voice and as a result the sentence has an awkward structure. In other words, the direct object of the sentence, which in this case is the word "house", and the verb of the sentence, which is the word "hit", comes before the subject of the sentence, which is the word "car." In most cases, with only a few exceptions when the passive voice is used as a literary device, the subject of the sentence must come before the verb and the direct object. Since the car is the object actually performing the action of hitting the house, the word car should come before the verb "hit" and the direct object "house." Therefore, the correct way to structure the sentence would be "A car hit the house last year."