Hannah found this sentence: 'The reason why the experiment failed was because the temperature was not carefully controlled.'
How should Hannah improve this sentence to eliminate redundancy?
- Change 'The reason why' to 'The reason that' and remove 'because' for 'was that'
- Remove 'why' and change 'was because' to 'is that' for proper tense consistency
- Keep 'The reason why' but change 'was because' to 'was that' to avoid redundancy (correct answer)
- Change 'The reason why' to 'Why' and remove 'was because' entirely
Explanation: The correct answer is C. 'The reason...because' is redundant since both words indicate causation. The correct form is 'The reason why...was that' or 'The reason...was that.' A overcorrects by changing both elements. B incorrectly changes tense from past to present. D creates an incomplete construction that changes the sentence structure too drastically.