- [Instructor] Chinese
cuisine is more of a science than an art, it requires experimentation,
trial-and-error, and years of experience. Okay, so this is a punctuation question. We know that because we have a comma
underlined in the original. Then in the choices, choice B has a colon and then a comma, choice C has a semicolon, choice D has no punctuation at all. And we can look at this by
sort of asking ourselves what are the rules about colons
and semicolons and commas? And in short, a colon is used to introduce an example, a quotation, a list, or an explanation for something. And in this case, this is
a bit of an explanation. Chinese cuisine is more
of a science than an art. Oh yeah, how? Well, it requires
experimentation, trial-and-error, and years of experience. So it is a little bit of an explanation, so a colon should work, but the problem here is that
that comma, this comma here, is making this whole answer wrong. Chinese cuisine is more
of a science than an art, it requires experimentation. No, there's no extra pause there. It doesn't make sense. So we can cross that out. Then we have the semicolon
we're thinking about. And semicolons are used to
separate two independent clauses. An independent clause is a clause that could function on
its own as a sentence. So in this case, let's check it out. Chinese cuisine is more
of a science than an art. Okay, that could be its own sentence. It requires experimentation,
trial-and-error, and years of experience. Okay, it requires, subject, verb, it requires those three things. That also is a complete sentence, a
complete independent clause. This is our answer. We definitely do need punctuation because these commas, all the punctuation offers pauses. So one way to check commas for future questions you might approach is to just give them a little extra pause and see whether it sounds weird. So in this case, Chinese
cuisine is more of a science than an art. It requires, you definitely
need a pause there, but in this case not a comma because of the two independent clauses. And you also need a comma
after experimentation, trial-and-error, and years of experience. So you need those commas as well.