Sentence Correction

To help counteract the adverse effects of trout stocking on the amphibian populations in certain mountain lakes, biologists are recommending cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even their being removed from some popular fishing lakes.

(A) cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even their being removed
(B) cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even that they remove them
(C) that trout stocking be cut back in some states and they even remove the trout
(D) that some states cut back on trout stocking and even their being removed
(E) that some states cut back on trout stocking and even remove the trout

[spoiler]OA: E[/spoiler]

Recommending that X be Y--fine.

What are the other errors in other options?

Please explain.

To help counteract the adverse effects of trout stocking on the amphibian populations in certain mountain lakes, biologists are recommending cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even their being removed from some popular fishing lakes.

(A) cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even their being removed - 'their' is ambiguous and recommending should be followed with 'that'.
(B) cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even that they remove them recommeding 'that' and the sentence just seems awkard with 'on the part of some states..'
(C) that trout stocking be cut back in some states and they even remove the trout I think there is parallelism error
(D) that some states cut back on trout stocking and even their being removed 'their' is akward.
(E) that some states cut back on trout stocking and even remove the trout correct use of 'recommending that' and no awkard construction

Hope this helps.

gmat_perfect wrote:To help counteract the adverse effects of trout stocking on the amphibian populations in certain mountain lakes, biologists are recommending cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even their being removed from some popular fishing lakes.

(A) cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even their being removed
(B) cutting back on trout stocking on the part of some states and even that they remove them
(C) that trout stocking be cut back in some states and they even remove the trout
(D) that some states cut back on trout stocking and even their being removed
(E) that some states cut back on trout stocking and even remove the trout

[spoiler]OA: E[/spoiler]

Recommending that X be Y--fine.

What are the other errors in other options?

Please explain.

Yes grammatically Recommending that X be Y is correct.

A/B: recommending cutting is plain wrong; we should avoid the concatenated ING's

C: it suffers from 2 problems:
1) [Meaning] it is states which can cut back on trout stocking; trout stocking can't cut by itself.
2) [Grammar] Parallelism is violated: you must have "that" after "and" here if the sentence after "and" has a proper subject and verb (Subject being "they" in this case)

for example: College recommended that X and that Y

D: Parallelism problem: X and Y-- X and Y are not parallel


CosmicEnergy

1. Recommending that, leaves C,D,E
2. "they" in C can refer to states or biologists (Ambiguity)- Wrong
3. D - obvious being and their reference to either states or biologists.

Couls someone explain why C is wrong ?

I do not think They is ambiguous here .

Regarding C, there are a few problems:

1) The verb tense of "remove" is incorrect, because you have:

biologists are recommending x and they even remove y

Because the two actions are taken as similar/equivalent, they should be in the same form (e.g. "biologists are recommending x and even removing some trout...")

"Are recommending" is present-tense...it's going on now. "They even remove" is an indicative-tense, "that's just what happens" verb, so logically it doesn't make sense, either. The purpose of the sentence is to talk about current events happening in trout stocking.

2) "in some states" is an ambiguous modifier. I don't think that "they" is really an unclear pronoun - the only subject that it can replace is "biologists". But the modifier "in some states" could take the form of:

-biologists are making the recommendation in some states

OR

-trout stocking should be cut back in some states

By turning that from a modifier into a subject in D and E ("some states should cut back...") the remaining answers fix that problem.