Software developers at the company follow a rigorous quality assurance process. Before any new features are released to customers, the...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

• Software developers at the company follow a rigorous quality assurance process.
• Before any new features are released to customers,
  • the testing team compiles detailed reports
    • on potential bugs
      • discovered during trials.
• The development team must address and resolve (?)
  • before the product can launch.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's read from the beginning to understand what's happening:

First sentence:

• "Software developers at the company follow a rigorous quality assurance process."
  • This sets the scene – there's a thorough QA process in place.

Second sentence:

• "Before any new features are released to customers,"
  • This tells us the timing – before customers get new features
• "the testing team compiles detailed reports"
  • The testing team creates comprehensive reports
• "on potential bugs discovered during trials."
  • These reports document bugs that were found during testing

So far we know: the testing team finds bugs during trials and documents them in reports.

Third sentence – this is where we have the blank:

• "The development team must address and resolve ______ before the product can launch."

Let's look at our choices:

• We have: it, them, this, that
• These are pronouns – so we need to figure out what they're referring back to

To see what works here, let's understand what the development team would be resolving!

Looking back at the previous sentence, we have two possible things:

• "detailed reports" – the documentation
• "potential bugs" – the actual problems found

What do we notice?

• The development team wouldn't "resolve" reports – they resolve the actual problems
  • The reports are just documentation
  • The bugs are what need to be fixed
• So the pronoun needs to refer back to "potential bugs"
• "Potential bugs" is plural (bugs = more than one)
  • Therefore, we need a plural pronoun

The correct answer is them – it's the only plural pronoun in our choices, and it correctly refers back to "potential bugs."

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Matching Pronouns to What They Refer To

When you use a pronoun (a word that stands in for a noun), it must match in number with the noun it's replacing (called the antecedent in grammar terms). This means:

• If the antecedent is singular → use a singular pronoun (it, this, that)
  • Example: "The company announced a new policy. It goes into effect next month."
  • "policy" (singular) → "it" (singular)
• If the antecedent is plural → use a plural pronoun (them, these, those)
  • Example: "The researchers discovered several fossils. They dated them to the Jurassic period."
  • "fossils" (plural) → "them" (plural)

How this applies to our question:

• The pronoun needs to refer back to "potential bugs"
• "Bugs" is plural (more than one bug)
• Therefore, we need "them" (the plural pronoun)
• The sentence correctly reads: "address and resolve them" (referring to multiple bugs)

Key tip: Always trace back to find what noun the pronoun is replacing, then check if that noun is singular or plural!