GMAT - Verbal Sample Questions
Question #3
3a. Explain why the following sentence might be considered incorrect and rewrite the sentence so it is correct: He used to play cribbage with his father every day, and then goes out with him for ice cream.
3b. This sentence is incorrect because each clause uses a predicate that is in a different tense and it isn't clear whether the change in tense is deliberate. The predicate "used to play" is a past perfect tense while the predicate "goes" is a present perfect progressive tense. This is a rather complicated way of saying that the predicate "used to play" is describing an action that had been going on for a long time, but is not going on anymore while the predicate "goes" is actually describing an action that the individual started a long time ago and he is still doing it. There are a variety of ways to correct this error, but the simplest way would be to change "and then goes out" to "but now he just go out" if the subject is still performing the action. The correct sentence would therefore be "He used to play cribbage with his father every day, but now he just goes out with him for ice cream."