Under a Provision of the Constitution that was Never Applied GMAT Sentence Correction

Question: Under a provision of the Constitution that was never applied, Congress has been required to call a convention for considering possible amendments to the document when formally asked to do it by the legislatures of two-thirds of the states.

(A) was never applied, Congress has been required to call a convention for considering possible amendments to the document when formally asked to do it
(B) was never applied, there has been a requirement that Congress call a convention for consideration of possible amendments to the document when asked to do it formally
(C) was never applied, whereby Congress is required to call a convention for considering possible amendments to the document when asked to do it formally
(D) has never been applied, whereby Congress is required to call a convention to consider possible amendments to the document when formally asked to do so
(E) has never been applied, Congress is required to call a convention to consider possible amendments to the document when formally asked to do so

“Under a provision of the Constitution that was never applied, Congress has been required to call a convention” - is a GMAT sentence correction question. This particular GMAT sentence correction topic has been taken from the book ‘The Official Guide of GMAT Verbal Review’. This question checks Meaning, Pronouns, Subject-verb agreement, and Idiom. GMAT Sentence Correction questions comprise 11-16 questions to be completed within 65 minutes. Each Sentence Correction question contains a sentence with an underlined portion that includes 0-2 errors.

Answer: E
Explanation: The following concepts are tested here:

1. TENSE USAGE :
   We see the question states that a provision of the Constitution was never applied. Then the usage of "has been required" is incorrect. The detail stating the provision is a simple present tense would be preferred.
2. TO CONSIDER vs FOR CONSIDERING
   We need to consider “To Consider” over “For Considering”. The phrase "To Consider" indicates the intention as required by the provision.
3. AMBIGUOUS PRONOUN "IT" in TO DO IT
   The usage of “To do it” is incorrect as “It” cannot refer back to the entire preceding phrase. “To do so” is chosen in this context.
   We need to check the options that follow all the concepts given above and is error-free:

Option A: Incorrect

Here statement A uses “was never applied” which is in the simple past tense. The phrase “under a provision that was never applied” implies that the provision of the Constitution can no longer be applied. The “it” does not have a proper referent here. “It” refers back to the entire phrase “call a convention”. This must be a verb phrase, not a singular noun. Hence option (A) is out.

Option B: Incorrect

Option (B) has all of the same problems as (A). The verb tenses are not correctly used. Here “it” is trying to refer back to “call a convention”, so the singular pronoun. Hence option (B) is incorrect.

Option C: Incorrect

Here “it” is trying to refer back to “call a convention”, so the singular pronoun. The modifier “under a provision that was never applied” is incorrectly used. The phrase in the sentence “whereby…” is a dependent clause. An independent clause was required. Hence option (C) is incorrect.

Option D: Incorrect

In option D the verb tense is correctly used.

In the sentence“so” can basically replace a verb phrase. It is probably a pronoun, but a pronoun that applies only to verbs and verb phrases. Hence option D is incorrect.

Option E: Correct

Option E follows everything as option D. The only exception is the “whereby..” which has been removed. It makes the sentence an independent clause after the comma. So here the sentence makes sense even without any pronoun or verb tense issues. Hence option E is the correct answer.

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