melanie.espeland wrote:The artist Pierre-Auguste Renior's last word was "flowers," spoken as a bouquet consisting of roses just picked from his garden were arranged in a vase on his bedroom windowsill.

a/ as a bouquet consisting of roses just picked from his garden were arranged

b/ as a bouquet of roses, just picked from his garden, were arranged

c/ as a bouquet of roses just picked from his garden was being arranged

d/ during the arrangement of a bouquet of roses, just picked from his garden

e/ while they arranged a bouquet of roses that had just been picked, from his garden

Answer is: C


This is an official practice exam question. I'd like to know more about why option C is correct - I have read a lot that the word "being" is not looked upon fondly on the test. I'm assuming this is the best answer because of verb tense, but when is being correct and not correct on the GMAT?

First, you could have looked at it this way.

A) bouquet...were being arranged Subject and verb don't agree. Eliminate.

B) bouquet...were arranged Subject and verb don't agree. Eliminate.

C) bouquet and and was do agree. Might be best. Keep for now.

D) just picked from his garden in a vase on his bedroom windowsill. Okay, so his garden was in a vase. Doubt it. Eliminate. By the way, the during doesn't sound optimal here either, but I'll leave that to someone like Mitch.

E) Once again the garden is in a vase on the bedroom windowsill. Eliminate. Also there may be an issue with the word while in this situation.

Anyway, we can choose C, whether or not the word being is the greatest, because all the other choices have clear structural issues.

Meanwhile, regarding the being, my take is that in this case the bouquet was actually being arranged. This makes more sense than saying that a bouquet was arranged or roses were arranged, which may imply that they were there the entire time, arranged.

There is a good discussion of the word being on this thread.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/correct-usage ... 23156.html

Thanks!