Jean Piaget c. 1968

Today’s SAT question of the day is an improving sentences question about Jean Piaget. You may appreciate him for this quote:

The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

Back to the sentence we have to improve…it’s missing a verb, which makes it a sentence fragment as it is given to us. We know that Jean Piaget is the subject of the sentence, so he is in need of a verb to express his existence.  We also need to keep the information in the right order.

B gives us a verb but makes the second clause grammatically illegal.

C gives us a verb but makes the sentence wordy and redundant.

E gives us a verb and does everything the right way.  Three cheers for E, the winner of the day.

Remember that verbs are one of the most frequently tested topics in the SAT writing section.  Check that they agree in number, person, and tense, and make sure that they exist at all in cases like this one.