GMAT Prep SC - Dr Ruth R Faden

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by aspirant2011 » Thu May 26, 2011 8:28 am
duongthang wrote:
Stuart Kovinsky wrote:
khojason wrote:In 1994 the white house named Dr Ruth R. Faden chairperson of the federal advisory committee of experts they assigned to do a report on the history and ethics of the government's radiation experiments on humans in the 1950's and 1960's.

A. they assigned to do
B. to be assigned doing
C. that was being assigned doing
D. assigned for doing
E. it assigned to do
Hi all!

E is definitely the best choice. While "it" is technically ambiguous (both the White House and the Federal Advisory Committee of experts are possible antecedents), none of the other choices provide a better alternative. Remember, while the GMAT prefers non-ambiguous references, if the reference is clear from the context of the sentence then seemingly ambiguous references aren't considered ambiguous.

Since the White House "named", parallelism dictates that the White House also "assigned", making "it" non-ambiguous.

Idiomatically we can "do a report", so (E) is also the idiomatic winner. "assigned for doing a report" will never be correct on the GMAT (as an aside, "assigned to do a report" without the "it" would be fine and arguably superior to (E)).
Kovinsky, thank, and please, help me more
you said that when we have to choose between FOR DOING and TO DO, TO DO is correct by standard of gmat grammar, not by standard of general grammar. in the general grammar book this matter is never mention. Is that right?. I see in many questions in OG books, TO DO is perfered to FOR DOING.

is my thinking correct? Kovinsky.
Hi duongthang,

"to do" is used for showing intention and in GMAT normally ing form is not preferred

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by Stuart@KaplanGMAT » Thu May 26, 2011 8:57 am
duongthang wrote:Kovinsky, thank, and please, help me more
you said that when we have to choose between FOR DOING and TO DO, TO DO is correct by standard of gmat grammar, not by standard of general grammar. in the general grammar book this matter is never mention. Is that right?. I see in many questions in OG books, TO DO is perfered to FOR DOING.

is my thinking correct? Kovinsky.
Hi,

GMAT grammar/style isn't always different from standard grammar/style (in fact, it's supposed to be the same). By the standards of North American idioms, "for doing" will pretty much never be correct (I'm pretty sure you can come up with a counter-example to any rule of English style/grammar, which is why I won't say "never correct" - but I strongly doubt you'd ever see such a case on the GMAT).
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by lunarpower » Fri May 27, 2011 12:22 am
i agree with stuart -- (e) is the least bad choice here -- although i'm 99.99% sure that "do a report" is not an acceptable idiom in formal english.

still, though, this is a poorly written (and, as usual, unsourced) problem.

i'll give my usual, annoying warnings/questions:
* what's the source of this question?

* if you don't know the source, why are you using it?



if you downloaded a bunch of questions online and paid $0 for them, then that's exactly what they are worth. like most of these unsourced third-party questions, this one is just going to make you un-learn the things you should know and "learn" things that are wrong.
stay away.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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