Explanation
Creating a filter: We read the prompt. Something appears
to be missing: our trained ears want to hear not only "rather," but rather "but
rather." When the word "rather" is
preceded in a sentence by "not," the phrase should be "but rather," and "not
[only]...but rather..." is a two-part construction requiring parallelism. We
can hear this more easily by omitting the dependent clause that starts with
"that will promote...," since dependent clauses can be omitted from a sentence
without impacting the grammatical of the main, independent clause. "Skeptics
view the increase not as a measure that will blah blah, but rather as a step
blah blah." That sounds better. We look for "but rather" in the answer choices.
Applying the filter: We don't find "but rather," but
answer choice (D) solves the problem by introducing the key missing word "but,"
to communicate the contrast that the imaginary author of this sentence intends
to convey.
Choices (C) and (E) have the word "but" but in nonsensical
phrases. In choice (B), also, the word "yet" is not a proper word to convey the
intended function of "but," which is to establish the proper way that the
minimum wage should be viewed according to the sentence. The correct answer is
(D).
Many sentence correction questions rely on knowledge of
idiom; in other words, no amount of logic will help you solve them if you
aren't familiar with the phrases involved. Complicating the matter is the fact
that the test makers don't publish or cite any kind of list of idioms that you
must know for the test. Given that, the best way to strengthen your knowledge
of idioms is to go through realistic practice questions and take note of the
idioms as you go. All of the practice questions in this free course are modeled
after official questions released by the test maker and hence provide as good a
basis of the idiomatic English knowledge you'll need for the GMAT. Again, the
correct answer is (D).
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