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-Patrick

EricKryk wrote:Over the past few years, banks have systematically raised their old fees and invented new ones that are harder and harder for consumers to avoid.

(A) banks have systematically raised their old fees and invented new ones that are harder and harder for consumers to avoid

(B) banks are systematically raising their old fees and inventing new ones that become harder and harder for consumers to avoid

(C) banks systematically raising old fees and inventing new ones make them harder and harder for consumers to avoid

(D) as banks systematically raised their old fees and invented new ones, avoiding them becomes harder and harder for consumers

(E) as banks have systematically raised their old fees and invented new ones, it is becoming harder and harder for consumers to avoid them

Hi Eric!

This sentence is all about proper verb tenses - one of the most commonly tested issues in sentence correction.

Remember to always use the non-underlined portion of the sentence (which is, by definition, correct) to guide your selection for the underlined portion.

Here, as soon as we see "Over the past few years," we should predict that we need a "have" or "has" verb to indicate an action that started in the past and is continuing in the present.

Quickly scanning the choices, (A) jumps right out. Checking the full syntax of (a):

Over the past few years, banks [have done one thing] and [done another thing] that [are something].

Perfect! (a) looks great, nothing needs to be fixed - we have the right verbs and good parallelism throughout.

(b), (c) and (d) all lack the proper continuous verbs.

(e) may have been tempting at first, but fails at the end: "it IS becoming harder" changes the tense of the sentence. If (e) had finished up with "it HAS BECOME harder and harder..." then it would have been an acceptable alternative (and of course would never have appeared along with (a), because then it would be too close a call to determine which one were correct).

Stuart Kovinsky wrote:

EricKryk wrote:Over the past few years, banks have systematically raised their old fees and invented new ones that are harder and harder for consumers to avoid.

(A) banks have systematically raised their old fees and invented new ones that are harder and harder for consumers to avoid

(B) banks are systematically raising their old fees and inventing new ones that become harder and harder for consumers to avoid

(C) banks systematically raising old fees and inventing new ones make them harder and harder for consumers to avoid

(D) as banks systematically raised their old fees and invented new ones, avoiding them becomes harder and harder for consumers

(E) as banks have systematically raised their old fees and invented new ones, it is becoming harder and harder for consumers to avoid them

Hi Eric!

This sentence is all about proper verb tenses - one of the most commonly tested issues in sentence correction.

Remember to always use the non-underlined portion of the sentence (which is, by definition, correct) to guide your selection for the underlined portion.

Here, as soon as we see "Over the past few years," we should predict that we need a "have" or "has" verb to indicate an action that started in the past and is continuing in the present.

Quickly scanning the choices, (A) jumps right out. Checking the full syntax of (a):

Over the past few years, banks [have done one thing] and [done another thing] that [are something].

Perfect! (a) looks great, nothing needs to be fixed - we have the right verbs and good parallelism throughout.

(b), (c) and (d) all lack the proper continuous verbs.

Hi.

Why in choice A "that are harder and harder", which uses simple present tense, can express something happened in the past? Does the fact that the fees have become harder and harder start to exist in the past?

Thanks.