Ethan Todras-Whitehill

Teaches at Veritas Prep

Education:
BA, Tufts

Which is your favorite lesson to teach?
Data Sufficiency, no doubt. I love the hungry looks my students get in their eyes when it suddenly clicks and they realize they can use the GMAT's traps against it. The Princess Bride routine I do as part of it? That helps, I'm sure, but it might just be to keep us all entertained.

What is your favorite problem from the Official Guide and why?
13th Ed, SC #133

I really like teaching Sentence Correction because it's the one place in Verbal where significant strides can be made by learning a few key grammatical concepts. This problem does its best to hide its classic 3/2 verb agreement split by switching up the continuous/non-continuous aspect (not a concept tested on the GMAT) in the verb decision point at the end of the underlining. Once you notice that split, it also does its best to hide the subject behind a raft of modifiers, but again a simple rule (the subject you're looking for won't be found in a modifier unless the verb is part of that same modifier) helps us get rid of tempting plural candidates "nets," "devices," and "laws" to find the correct singular subject "compliance." From there it's relatively obvious.

So what I like is that this problem is very easy for someone who has mastered two of the key skills we teach: identifying the good decision points and identifying the proper subject for a verb. And yet for someone lacking those two skills it's fairly difficult. I find that while many students want to improve on Verbal, deep down they need to be sold on why they should relearn (or in many cases learn for the first time) basic grammar instead of just relying on their ears. And this problem does a good job of showing them.