Sentence Correction

Thanks a lot Ron !!!

Here the OA = E....which contains being....

but in general we read that being is in general wrong in GMAT...

Can you please tell how to find out when being is right and when being is wrong ?

IMO C

lunarpower wrote:

martin.jonson007 wrote:IMO C

make sure you read the rest of the thread before doing this.

this is an official problem whose answer is (e).

I knw ans is E and You hav given all proof...!

but still i have posted my ans , wch i find rignt acc to me so that somebody cud correct me... with 2-3 lines info , wch is to th point...

Too much info makes me crazy... neither i can digest too much info nor am patient enough to keep reading.. so sorry...

'Brevity' is wat i look for...

lunarpower wrote:i posted some explanations for the answer choices here:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/heavy-commit ... tml#166275

these explanations are not terribly long; give them a shot.

martin.jonson007 wrote:Too much info makes me crazy... neither i can digest too much info nor am patient enough to keep reading.. so sorry...

if you are serious about this, then you need to forget about the gmat concepts themselves for a while, and take steps to rectify this issue -- perhaps check out some resources on attention (there is much helpful information on the internet), or try exercises in which you gradually absorb larger and larger amounts of text.

question -- if you don't like reading even a few lines, how do you deal with the reading comprehension passages?
some of them are sixty to seventy lines long!




in any case, in sentence correction, most explanations giving a decently complete treatment of a topic are going to be longer than a couple of lines.

Dear Ron,

Believe me , whenever i see yr post, i immediately put that thread on FAVORITE so that i can look at them later on...!

all yr post are PAR EXCELLENCE...!

but it take too much time to read and understand tham.. as t hey are very very depthful...!

i have decided that i will do 30-35 ques per day.. but if i see yr post then very less time left for me for other threads...

Again.. want to write more but TIME IS LIMITED.. so skipping here...

but truly , presence of EXPERTS PPL like YOU make Beatthegmat.com different(better) from GMATCLUB.COM etc...

lunarpower wrote:i can vouch that this is an official GMATPREP problem.

Uri wrote:

Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

"it" seems ambiguous: commitment or course of action?

YES.
"it" is ambiguous here, for exactly the reasons you have outlined.

by the way, this is PRECISELY the reason why they chose to write "being heavily committed", rather than "heavy commitment", in the correct answer. see the discussion of that answer, below.

An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that worked well in the past, makes missing signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting ones likely when they do appear.

Changes the meaning. The fault here is transferred from commitment to the executive!

yeah.

there are also other problems, such as "misinterpreting ones", as well as the general ridiculous sloppiness of this sentence.

An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action is likely to miss or misinterpret signs of incipient trouble when they do appear, especially if it has worked well in the past.

I think there is modifier issue in this choice

it's more the pronoun issue.

the best way i can explain it to non-native speakers of english is that "it" could potentially stand for "incipient trouble" and is thus ambiguous (especially in light of the fact that "incipient trouble" is WAY WAY closer to "it" than is the properly intended antecedent).

to any native english speakers reading this post, you should reflexively find ugliness in this pronoun. in other words, you just won't know what "it" is supposed to stand for, unless you go back through the sentence at least one more time and hunt for an antecedent.

Executives� being heavily committed to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes them likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting them when they do appear.

the apostrophe is perhaps not needed. Also concerned with "being"

you missed what is easily the most important problem with this part: the blatant lack of parallelism between "miss" and "misinterpreting".
these two ideas are clearly parallel, and they're presented in tandem, so they have to have parallel grammatical structures.

Being heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that has worked well in the past, is likely to make an executive miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

once again worried with "being". don't think it is necessary here.

well, you clearly can't just OMIT "being", i.e., say "heavily committed" by itself. if you try to do that, then the sentence won't have a subject at all.
(if you don't understand this, post back)

see next post for details on why (e) is the best choice here.[/quote]


Ron,
Say, for instance we didn't have option E in this question, wouldn't option A be correct?
In other words, though we have slight ambiguity between 'heavy commitment' and 'course of action' as an antecedent of 'it' , can't we assume that 'it' refers to 'course of action' on grounds of proximity? Pl. suggest......

lunarpower wrote:i can vouch that this is an official GMATPREP problem.

Uri wrote:

Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

"it" seems ambiguous: commitment or course of action?

YES.
"it" is ambiguous here, for exactly the reasons you have outlined.

Hi, can't we say that 'it' refers to 'heavy commitment' as 'heavy commitment ' and 'it' both are used as 'subject' of 2 different fragments.... pl. reply........

by the way, this is PRECISELY the reason why they chose to write "being heavily committed", rather than "heavy commitment", in the correct answer. see the discussion of that answer, below.

An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that worked well in the past, makes missing signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting ones likely when they do appear.

Changes the meaning. The fault here is transferred from commitment to the executive!

yeah.

there are also other problems, such as "misinterpreting ones", as well as the general ridiculous sloppiness of this sentence.

An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action is likely to miss or misinterpret signs of incipient trouble when they do appear, especially if it has worked well in the past.

I think there is modifier issue in this choice

it's more the pronoun issue.

the best way i can explain it to non-native speakers of english is that "it" could potentially stand for "incipient trouble" and is thus ambiguous (especially in light of the fact that "incipient trouble" is WAY WAY closer to "it" than is the properly intended antecedent).

to any native english speakers reading this post, you should reflexively find ugliness in this pronoun. in other words, you just won't know what "it" is supposed to stand for, unless you go back through the sentence at least one more time and hunt for an antecedent.

Executives� being heavily committed to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes them likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting them when they do appear.

the apostrophe is perhaps not needed. Also concerned with "being"

you missed what is easily the most important problem with this part: the blatant lack of parallelism between "miss" and "misinterpreting".
these two ideas are clearly parallel, and they're presented in tandem, so they have to have parallel grammatical structures.

Being heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that has worked well in the past, is likely to make an executive miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

once again worried with "being". don't think it is necessary here.[/quote]

well, you clearly can't just OMIT "being", i.e., say "heavily committed" by itself. if you try to do that, then the sentence won't have a subject at all.
(if you don't understand this, post back)

see next post for details on why (e) is the best choice here.

lunarpower wrote:i can vouch that this is an official GMATPREP problem.

Uri wrote:

Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

"it" seems ambiguous: commitment or course of action?

YES.
"it" is ambiguous here, for exactly the reasons you have outlined.

by the way, this is PRECISELY the reason why they chose to write "being heavily committed", rather than "heavy commitment", in the correct answer. see the discussion of that answer, below.

Again Ron, should not the second 'it' be in the form: makes it likely for him to......... Pl. respond....

An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that worked well in the past, makes missing signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting ones likely when they do appear.

Changes the meaning. The fault here is transferred from commitment to the executive!

yeah.

there are also other problems, such as "misinterpreting ones", as well as the general ridiculous sloppiness of this sentence.

An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action is likely to miss or misinterpret signs of incipient trouble when they do appear, especially if it has worked well in the past.

I think there is modifier issue in this choice

it's more the pronoun issue.

the best way i can explain it to non-native speakers of english is that "it" could potentially stand for "incipient trouble" and is thus ambiguous (especially in light of the fact that "incipient trouble" is WAY WAY closer to "it" than is the properly intended antecedent).

to any native english speakers reading this post, you should reflexively find ugliness in this pronoun. in other words, you just won't know what "it" is supposed to stand for, unless you go back through the sentence at least one more time and hunt for an antecedent.

Executives� being heavily committed to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes them likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting them when they do appear.

the apostrophe is perhaps not needed. Also concerned with "being"

you missed what is easily the most important problem with this part: the blatant lack of parallelism between "miss" and "misinterpreting".
these two ideas are clearly parallel, and they're presented in tandem, so they have to have parallel grammatical structures.

Being heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that has worked well in the past, is likely to make an executive miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

once again worried with "being". don't think it is necessary here.

well, you clearly can't just OMIT "being", i.e., say "heavily committed" by itself. if you try to do that, then the sentence won't have a subject at all.
(if you don't understand this, post back)

see next post for details on why (e) is the best choice here.

Hi Ron
Thank u for your explanations
you said C is incorrect because " "it" could potentially stand for "incipient trouble" and is thus ambiguous (especially in light of the fact that "incipient trouble" is WAY WAY closer to "it" than is the properly intended antecedent)."
but by the context of the sentence it is obvious that"it" must refer to "course of action" ,and as far as i know GMAT is lenient on pronoun ambiguity.
Is there another reason why this choice is incorrect

Thank you Ron for your explanations and insights.
Thank you very much