GRE^® Verbal Practice | Sentence Equivalence Q1

This is a very interesting sentence equivalence question that deals with the use of the word "Although". Try the question without looking at the answer explanation. If you face difficulty in arriving at the correct answer, take help from the detailed explanation provided below.

Question 1: Although the Industrial revolution brought about a raft of new techniques in the area of machine design, the methods used for the printing and binding of books continued ___________ till the early years of the 20th century.

1. intermittently
2. improving
3. transforming
4. unchanged
5. advancing
6. unmodified

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Explanatory Answer

Meanings for the words given in this question are provided in the table. Before going through the detailed explanation, check whether you are able to arrive at the answer after knowing meanings for the words.

S No.	Word	Meaning
1	Intermittently	Happening at irregular intervals
2	Improving	Becoming better
3	Transforming	Changing
4	Unchanged	Without changing. Remaining the same.
5	Advancing	Improving or becoming more complex
6	Unmodified	Not changed in shape or form

Let us start by focusing on the keyword. The word that holds the key to understanding the meaning of this sentence is “Although”. We know that the word “Although” implies contrast. It means that something that happened was not expected to happen.

In the context of this sentence:

The industrial revolution brought about a lot of changes and new techniques in the area of machine design. So what is the expected result of that? We might expect these new changes to bring changes and improvements in printing and book binding. However the word “although” indicates that the author says that this did NOT happen. So printing and book binding must have remained the same.

This rules out all the answer options except D and F. The techniques remained unchanged and unmodified. Note that the words which you select as answer options need not be the same, but the sentence has to have the same overall meaning when you plug in the answer options.

Choices D & F are the correct answers.