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Tricky Question

by rocker1703 » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:38 pm
3. With its plan to develop seven and a half acres of shore land, Cleveland is but one of a large number of communities on the Great Lakes that is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

(A) is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(B) is looking at its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(C) are looking to their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(D) are looking to its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting

(E) are looking at their waterfronts as a way they can improve the quality of urban life and attract

4. Young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits caused by the desire to be as thin as possible.

(A) Young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits caused by the desire to be as thin as possible.

(B) Good eating habits sometimes fail to be maintained by young female ballet dancers and gymnasts caused by desiring to be as thin as possible.

(C) Because they desire to be as thin as possible, good eating habits are sometimes not maintained by young female ballet dancers and gymnasts.

(D) Because they desire to be as thin as possible, young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits.

(E) Young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits because they desire to be as thin as possible


Will some body help me with the above sentence correction questions...i got them wrong.....

(E) are looking at their waterfronts as a way they can improve the quality of urban life and attract
Last edited by rocker1703 on Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by sankruth » Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:06 pm
3 - A
Singular Cleveland, so 'is' and Waterfront can provide 'a way to improve' but waterfront itself cannot imporve, which rules out B.

4 - E
The original sentence seem to indicate that good eating habits are caused by desire to be thin. E correctly addresses this problem in active voice and is not wordy.
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by rocker1703 » Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:51 am
Thanks Sankruth....

but the right answers are :

3 - C

4 - D

i dont have the explanation answers with me. The answer keys are confusing...TRy again and if you can explain me the same....it would be really nice....
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by sankruth » Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:32 am
4 - D/E seem to say the same but D uses a modifier while E fairly straightforward. hence I chose E. I still cant spot an error in E.

"they desire to be as thin as possible" sounds a bit awkward but thats true for both D and E.

3 - Should we see treat this as "...communities that are looking to their waterfronts..." rather than "Cleveland is looking to its waterfront..."? Hence C? That is the only point I can pick!
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by camitava » Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:28 am
sankruth, I am agree with you with the first Qs but in the second Qs, I am having some different idea. IMO A. Because the young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain their good eating habit which they have started to maintain a good figure (as thin as possible). But E says -
Young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits because they desire to be as thin as possible
- Which means to me that young female dancers and gymnasts fail to maintain good eating habits because they want to be thin - which appears to me as viard. What do u say guys?
Correct me If I am wrong


Regards,

Amitava
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by camitava » Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:34 am
Sorry rocker1703! I missed in my last post. To me, D appears to me the bes option to chose. Yop! among the five different options, A and D carry somehow the option to chose. A is having some idiomatic problem like -
caused by the desire to be as thin as possible
. To me, the habit is not the effect of the cause. So IMO D.

Sorry for my delayed post ...
Correct me If I am wrong


Regards,

Amitava
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by sujaysolanki » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:07 am
3. With its plan to develop seven and a half acres of shore land, Cleveland is but one of a large number of communities on the Great Lakes that is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

(A) is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(B) is looking at its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(C) are looking to their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(D) are looking to its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting

(E) are looking at their waterfronts as a way they can improve the quality of urban life and attract


Tests Subject verb agreement Cleveland - sing ..so CDE out ..
The correct idiom is look at ..so A is out ...moreover A is wordy




4. Young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits caused by the desire to be as thin as possible.

(A) Young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits caused by the desire to be as thin as possible.

(B) Good eating habits sometimes fail to be maintained by young female ballet dancers and gymnasts caused by desiring to be as thin as possible.

(C) Because they desire to be as thin as possible, good eating habits are sometimes not maintained by young female ballet dancers and gymnasts.

(D) Because they desire to be as thin as possible, young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits.

(E) Young female ballet dancers and gymnasts sometimes fail to maintain good eating habits because they desire to be as thin as possible


Its between D and E

In E ..they refers to what is not clear... cud be both dancers or gymnasts

Hence D
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by sankruth » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:30 am
Sujay,
Regarding Q#3 the problem with B is "looking at...", which conveys the meaning of staring as opposed to "looking to..." which is similar to considering

eg. "Im looking at the problem" VERSUS "Im looking to solve the problem"

Cleveland is considering the waterfront option, hence "looking to" I feel is more appropriate.

However, it seems like OA is C, which still perplexes me. I have given a half-arsed explanation in a previous posting (supporting C, more on hindsight!) but Im still not quite convinced.

Regarding Q#4, wouldn't you say D too makes it ambiguous as to whether "they" refers to ballet dancers or gymnasts?
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by sujaysolanki » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:59 am
I am convinced about 4 ..that it is D ...because it does not have a modifier error ..it is clear that they refers to them both as a entity


As for 3 ..it would be good to get more opinions in ..but i still feel B is better ..any verbal tutors care to throw some light
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by Danielle » Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:58 am
Rocker, I have definitive explanations for the OAs for both questions.

Question 1:

The answer is C for two reasons. First, Cleveland is just an example of the larger group of great lakes communities that are the subject, so A and B can be eliminated. Next 'looking to' is the right idiom, because it is to be used because "look at" is generally used to describe examining a concrete physical thing. Eliminate E. Now the difference between C and D is agreement -- whether the pronoun and noun should be singular (it's waterfront) or plural (their waterfronts). Once again, we are talking about a group of communities, so it should be plural and C is the answer.

Question 2:

First off, A, B, and C can be eliminated right of because they are horribly passive (see "caused by" in all those sentences?). That leaves it between D and E. The sentences seem to be the same only reversed, and honestly you would see both sentences in the real world, but when forced to examine them closely, in E, the position of "they" makes the meaning slightly ambiguous. It COULD mean the eating habits or the dancers. Therefore D is the best choice.
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by hemanth28 » Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:38 pm
Danielle wrote:Rocker, I have definitive explanations for the OAs for both questions.

Question 1:

The answer is C for two reasons. First, Cleveland is just an example of the larger group of great lakes communities that are the subject, so A and B can be eliminated. Next 'looking to' is the right idiom, because it is to be used because "look at" is generally used to describe examining a concrete physical thing. Eliminate E. Now the difference between C and D is agreement -- whether the pronoun and noun should be singular (it's waterfront) or plural (their waterfronts). Once again, we are talking about a group of communities, so it should be plural and C is the answer.

Hi Danielle,

You said Cleveland is just an example of large group of great lakes communities that are subject.Is this because of word but in "Cleveland is but one of a large number of communities".If there is'nt 'but' and sentance is "Cleveland is one of a large number of communities",what would be the answer(singular or plural).

"With its plan to develop seven and a half acres of shore land, Cleveland is but one of a large number of communities on the Great Lakes that is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses. "

If Cleveland is not the subject than dont you think that modifier is placed incorrectly in the question?

Thanks,
Hemant
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by sujaysolanki » Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:06 pm
nicely put danielle

hemant

Cleveland here is part of many communities ..hence that subject is plural ..hope this helps

(A) is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract
(B) is looking at its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract
(C) are looking to their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract
(D) are looking to its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting
(E) are looking at their waterfronts as a way they can improve the quality of urban life and attract
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by Danielle » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:08 pm
Hemant,

You're correct in seeing that 'but' makes all the difference in the example. If the but wasn't there, the sentence would have a different meaning. The 'but' makes it clear that Cleveland is one of many, not just one example.

That being said, when I wrote that Cleveland is not the subject, I did not mean of the sentence as a whole. I meant that Cleveland is not the subject that the last part of the sentence (are looking to their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract) is referring to. The sentence is talking about all the communities, with Cleveland as a particular example, briefly mentioned. This is a case where the meaning of the sentence does not match up with it's construction, as Cleveland is the clear subject of the sentence in the pure grammatical sense, but not the main idea of the sentence.
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by hemanth28 » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:44 pm
thanks danielle. :)
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by sankruth » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:18 am
Danielle wrote:Question 2:

First off, A, B, and C can be eliminated right of because they are horribly passive (see "caused by" in all those sentences?). That leaves it between D and E. The sentences seem to be the same only reversed, and honestly you would see both sentences in the real world, but when forced to examine them closely, in E, the position of "they" makes the meaning slightly ambiguous. It COULD mean the eating habits or the dancers. Therefore D is the best choice.
Danielle,
Im not fully convinced with your explanation for Q#2. In my opinion, the pronoun "they" cannot refer to eating habits because eating habits cannot have desires to be thin, so the pronoun "they" must refer to the dancers. Also, D starts with a modifier but E is a straightforward sentence.

Thanks,
Ramesh
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