While many students of foreign languages start out

[BTGmoderatorDC]

While many students of foreign languages start out with the best of intentions, many learners quickly discover that the effort involved in memorizing endless vocabulary words and doing countless drills are daunting.

A. the effort involved in memorizing endless vocabulary words and doing countless drills are daunting
B. the efforts involved in the memorizing of endless vocabulary words and doing countless drills are daunting
C. the effort involved with memorizing endless vocabulary words and in doing countless drills is daunting
D. the effort involved in the memorization of endless vocabulary words and doing countless drills is daunting
E. the effort involved in memorizing endless vocabulary words and in doing countless drills is daunting

What is wrong with other options?

OA E

[JayaSrinivasK]

D

[ErikaPrepScholar]

We should notice a few differences right away:

First, the verb at the end of the sentence switches between is and are. C, D, and E matches singular "effort" with singular "is", B matches plural "effort" with plural "are", while A has singular "effort" and plural "are". So we can eliminate A for agreement issues.

We should also notice that C uses "involved with" rather than "involved in". "Involved with" is a different idiom with a different meaning - a person can be involved with another person or an organization or a cause, but effort cannot be involved with memorizing. So we can eliminate C for idiom issues.

Looking at B, D, and E, we see that both B uses the phrase "in the memorizing of", D uses "in the memorization of", while E using "in memorizing". We'll start with B. Looking at the rest of the sentence, we see there are two things that effort is involved in:

the efforts involved in
-the memorizing of endless vocabulary words
-doing countless drills

Because we have a list of two things, they must be grammatically parallel. But they aren't in B! Looking at D, we see the the same thing:

the effort involved in
-the memorization of endless vocabulary words
-doing countless drills

However, in E, we see:
the effort involved
-in memorizing endless vocabulary words
-in doing countless drills is daunting

So because B and D aren't parallel OR concise (and because there is still no clear reason for "effort" to change to "efforts", we can rule out B and D and pick E.