[Video] Q30: No change or indiscriminately, they or indiscriminately. they or indiscriminately, therefore they

Explanation for Question 30 From the Writing Section on the Official Sat Practice Test 8

So we can see the question. 30 is a punctuation question, 2 right? And whenever we have a punctuation question, 3 we want to see what is going on in our sentence. 4 Are we making a list? Do we have dependent or independent clauses? 5 So the first thing that we're going to do is separate our sentence around 6 where we see the punctuation, right? Which in this case is that semi-colon. 7 And now our purple part is because digital systems record indiscriminately. 8 This is a dependent clause. So even though it has a subject, 9 the systems, and it has a verb record, 10 it starts with the word because, and because is what we call a subordinating 11 conjunction. And whenever you have a subordinating conjunction, 12 that means that you have a dependent clause. 13 Additionally, if you just read it altogether, because digital systems record indiscriminately, 14 that just doesn't sound like a complete sentence. 15 And so you can use intuition to figure that out as well. 16 So we start with a dependent clause and then we say they are subject, 17 cannot discern important parts of the proceedings from other noises in the courtroom. 18 And so this is a complete sentence, 19 right? It's an independent clause because our subject is they, 20 the verb is discern and it's a complete sentence. 21 It could stand on its own. So we have a DC and then an 22 IC, and the only way to separate a dependent clause before an independent 23 clause is what the comma, there's only one way to do it, 24 right? I...