Elite Official Revision SC Q # 21

[richachampion]

Because of the enormous research and development expenditures required to survive in the electronics industry, an industry marked by rapid innovation and volatile demand, such firms tend to be very large.

A. to survive
B. of firms to survive
C. for surviving
D. for survival
E. for firms' survival

[richachampion]

OA: B

[Vincen]

What is wrong with option (C)? It seems correct.

[ErikaPrepScholar]

Hey Vincen and Rich,

The biggest thing here is to notice that the end of the sentence says "such firms". The construction "such ___" means that ___ needs to have come up before: "such" indicates that we are referring to the ___ from before (e.g. "Some schools were negatively impacted by the redistricting and now such schools don't have enough classroom space for their students" - "such schools" refers to the schools that were negatively impacted by redistricting).

Here, we can scan the sentence to see that it has actually never mentioned "firms" before! So "such firms" doesn't refer to anything. We need to introduce "firms" into the sentence so that "such firms" has something to refer to. We can eliminate A, C, and D.

Looking more closely at E, we see that it talks about "firms' survival" not "firms themselves" - "firms'" is a descriptor for "survival". Because we want "such firms" to refer to firms, not "firms' survival", this choice doesn't work. The correct answer is B.