Writing: Logical Comparison — Video Lesson

- [Instructor] We're looking at question 12 here from a passage titled "The Hype of Organic Healthier Food." I'll read us in. "Some people buy organic food because they believe organically grown crops are more nutritious and safer for consumption than the people who purchase their conventionally grown counterparts, which are usually produced with pesticides and synthetic fertilizers." Now, that's a very long sentence. So let's figure out what's going on in this sentence, what's the subject, what are the verbs. Okay, so some people, what do they do? They buy organic food. Why do they do it? Because they believe in something. What do they believe? They believe that organically grown crops are more nutritious and safer for consumption than something else. So they believe that organically grown crops are better than something else. And the use of the word than here signals to me that this is a logical comparison question. Logical comparison on the SAT is the idea that you should only make comparisons between things in the same category. You'll see one to two questions about logical comparison on test day. So an incorrect example, an example of illogical comparison would be, I prefer apples over people who love pears. So why is this incorrect? Because the sentence compares apples to people, not apples to pears. And a person is not picked in an orchard. It's not the same thing. A person is not fruit. To fix this sentence, I need to compare apples to pears and change it to I prefer apples over pears. You might need to add a word like that or those in order to correct that illogical comparison. Pierre's croissants are less tender and delicious than Amadou. This is an illogical comparison because Amadou is a person not a pastry. So we want to compare his pastries to Pierre's. Pierre's croissants are less tender and delicious than those of Amadou. Or, Pierre's croissants are less tender and delicious than Almadou's. Let's go back to the question. Feel free to pause the video here if you want to take a crack at it yourself. Okay, let's do it together. I'm going to plug the options into the choices and see if the comparisons are logical. So people who buy organic food believe that organically grown crops are more nutritious and safer for consumption than choice A, the people who purchase their conventionally grown counterparts. So organically grown crops are more nutritious than people. I don't think we're talking about eating people here, that's an illogical comparison. I'm gonna cross off choice A. Choice B, organic crops are more nutritious and safer to eat than the purchase of their conventionally grown counterparts. Now, we're comparing organic fruit and vegetables to the purchase of, the buying process of conventionally grown fruit and veg. And that's illogical. It's comparing fruit to the act of buying fruit. I'm gonna cross off B. Choice C is purchasing, and that's basically the same as choice B. Remember, when two choices on the SAT are functionally identical, that's a great way to know they're both incorrect. They can't both be right, which means they must both be wrong. So I've crossed it off, too da loo, choice C. And that leaves choice D. Let's see what happens if we delete the underlined portion. Some people bull buy organic food because they believe organically grown crops are more nutritious and safer for consumption than their conventionally grown counterparts. Hey, how about that? It's comparing organic crops to their conventionally grown counterparts. So comparing crops to crops. That's our answer because it's a logical comparison. Your strategy here primarily turns on figuring out what's being compared to what. First, ask yourself, are they the same? Are you comparing two terms in similar categories? Cross out choices that are illogical. And then ask yourself, are there any other errors? If you find that two choices fix the logical comparison error, look at them closely. One will introduce an additional error. Use these tips to logic your way to the answer. Good luck out there. You've got this.