Sentence Correction

Controversial mortgage laws passed last year state that, if at any point during the maturation period of the loan the person in whose name it is taken is not able to meet the payments, that person's spouse will have responsibilities that include paying the balance.

1. will have responsibilities that include
2. will be responsible to pay
3. is responsible to pay
4. will be responsible for paying
5. is responsible for paying

Ans: D


Japan's abundant rainfall and the typically mild temperature throughout most of the country have produced a lush vegetation cover and, despite the mountainous terrain and generally poor soils, it has made possible the raising of a variety of crops.

A. it has made possible the raising of
B. has made possible for them to raise
C. have made it possible to raise
D. have made it possible for raising
E. thus making it possible for them to raise.

Ans: C

I have posted two questions to explain my confusion. Please pardon me.
For both the above questions, the decision between the shortlisted two answers (B and D for first question, C and D for second) was taken according to the correct idiom usage.

I get really confused when i choose between a '+ing' form and 'to + verb' form

Is there a way select the correct form even if i do not know the correct idiom.

Following is something that i have read from one forum but it did not helped me in the above cases.

"if you have to choose between an "ing" verb and the infinitive AFTER another verb, always choose the infinitive. When the verb does not follow another verb, the participle ("ing" form) is usually correct.
a. Coronary angiography, a sophisticated method used for diagnosing coronary ..."
i. we'd say "to diagnose" instead of "for diagnosing".
b. Coronary angiography, a sophisticated method for diagnosing coronary disease
i. Here 'for diagnosing' is correct
"

Please help me to understand this split.
regards

Hi!

It is true that often we see a verb following a verb with the second verb in infinitive form, but many of these questions rely on context and idiom so I don't think you can use that as a hard and fast rule. I think what would be the most helpful to you would be to do more grammar review and try to see infinitives and participles in as many examples as possible so you can better recognize what "sounds" right.

Here's the basics:

Participles are verbs that function as adjectives, and ends in -ing or sometimes -ed. Participles and participial phrases must be placed as close to the nouns or pronouns they modify as possible, and those nouns or pronouns must be clearly stated.

Infinitives are verbs but can have MANY functions in the sentence: noun, adjective, adverb, etc. Because they can function in numerous way within a sentence, they can be harder to understand.

https://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar ... infinitive

This web site identifies NINE different uses for the infinitive with examples, so you can read up on its usage. I like this site's explanations too:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/03/

The good news is that these verb tense errors are often accompanied by another error like idiom or parallelism, so that can help you narrow down answer choices! For example, in Question 1, we needed a future tense verb, "will," so you could have quickly eliminated two choices. Hope this helps!

Thanks missionGMAT007 for posting these problems
can you please reveal source?

prachich1987 wrote:Thanks missionGMAT007 for posting these problems
can you please reveal source?

These questions are already discussed in forums such as gmatclub, beatthegmat etc. I do not know of any specific source of these questions.

lunarpower wrote: you should beware questions from unknown sources -- especially if they're sentence correction questions. there are a lot of really bad sentence correction problems flying around out there.

proper review of official sentence correction problems (where "proper review" includes all of the steps listed for SC in this post: https://www.beatthegmat.com/550-to-720-i ... tml#330724), including OG and gmatprep, should be more than enough to keep a student occupied for months and months.

thanks Ron

VivianKerr wrote:Hi!

It is true that often we see a verb following a verb with the second verb in infinitive form, but many of these questions rely on context and idiom so I don't think you can use that as a hard and fast rule. I think what would be the most helpful to you would be to do more grammar review and try to see infinitives and participles in as many examples as possible so you can better recognize what "sounds" right.

Here's the basics:

Participles are verbs that function as adjectives, and ends in -ing or sometimes -ed. Participles and participial phrases must be placed as close to the nouns or pronouns they modify as possible, and those nouns or pronouns must be clearly stated.

Infinitives are verbs but can have MANY functions in the sentence: noun, adjective, adverb, etc. Because they can function in numerous way within a sentence, they can be harder to understand.

https://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar ... infinitive

This web site identifies NINE different uses for the infinitive with examples, so you can read up on its usage. I like this site's explanations too:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/03/

The good news is that these verb tense errors are often accompanied by another error like idiom or parallelism, so that can help you narrow down answer choices! For example, in Question 1, we needed a future tense verb, "will," so you could have quickly eliminated two choices. Hope this helps!

Thanks Vivian