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OG12-SC139-The company announced that its profits

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OG12-SC139-The company announced that its profits

by kvcpk » Sat Jul 10, 2010 7:26 am
Hi All,

Please read this before posting your reply.

Source of this question is OG-12. This question might have been discussed in BTG already. The very reason I am posting again is to approach SC in a structured way. Hence, I request everyone to post their comments in the following manner.

IMO: A/B/C/D/E

For each option, List the errors associated in the following style:
Option: A/B/C/D/E
Subject-Verb Agreement : NA
Parallelism: NA
Pronouns: NA
Modifiers: NA
Verb Tense:NA
Voice and Mood:NA
Comparisons:NA
Idioms:NA
Meaning/Conciseness:NA
Others:NA

This definitely takes a bit more time and effort. But it will help a lot of students to master OG questions/strategies. We need to know the best approach to solve these. It is equally important to know why the wrong answers are wrong. Explanation for each option will detail that out. Plan is to compile all these threads to a single place for future reference. Hope everyone agrees with me!!

The company announced that its profits declined much less in the second quarter than analysts had expected it to and its business will improve in the second half of the year.
(A) had expected it to and its business will improve
(B) had expected and that its business would improve
(C) expected it would and that it will improve its business
(D) expected them to and its business would improve
(E) expected and that it will have improved its business

OA B

Expecting active participation and do Let me know your thoughts!!
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by hardik.jadeja » Sat Jul 10, 2010 8:37 am
The question basically tests three things:
Parallelism, verb tense, brevity

(A) had expected it to and its business will improve
Problems:
Brevity: Unnecessarily uses IT to refer to profits. Its not required.
Parallelism: The sentence requires "that.. and that.."(X and Y) parallelism.

(B) had expected and that its business would improve
Correct Option

(C) expected it would and that it will improve its business
Problems:
Brevity: it would is unnecessary and wordy.
Verb Tense:
(1)We use past perfect tense when we want to indicate that one action occurred before another action in the past. Here, analysts expected profits to be at certain level(event 1) before the the company announced its profits(event 2). Event 1 happened before event 2 and thus when we are talking about event 1 in a sentence which also mentions event 2, we must use past perfect tense to refer event 1 to indicate that event 1 happened before event 2. So we need analysts had expected.
(2) We use will usually when we are certain about some event to happen in the future. Since the sentence has nothing that could indicate that the business will improve, it is better to use "its business would improve"

(D) expected them to and its business would improve
Problems:
Brevity: them to is unnecessary and wordy.
Parallelism: The sentence requires "that.. and that.."(X and Y) parallelism.
Verb Tense: We use past perfect tense when we want to indicate that one action occurred before another action in the past. Here, analysts expected profits to be at certain level(event 1) before the the company announced its profits(event 2). Event 1 happened before event 2 and thus when we are talking about event 1 in a sentence which also mentions event 2, we must use past perfect tense to refer event 1 to indicate that event 1 happened before event 2. So we need analysts had expected.

(E) expected and that it will have improved its business
Problems:
Verb Tense:
(1)We use past perfect tense when we want to indicate that one action occurred before another action in the past. Here, analysts expected profits to be at certain level(event 1) before the the company announced its profits(event 2). Event 1 happened before event 2 and thus when we are talking about event 1 in a sentence which also mentions event 2, we must use past perfect tense to refer event 1 to indicate that event 1 happened before event 2. So we need analysts had expected.
(2) Incorrectly uses the future perfect (will have improved) that implies the action will be completed rather than ongoing.

Hope that helps..
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by kvcpk » Sat Jul 10, 2010 9:12 am
Great Explanation once again. Thanks Hardik!!
No queries this time.
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