Brief psychotherapy requires far fewer hours and costs far

OMFG, how in this world can the OA be D? I mean what is "it is hoped" doing in between will and prove? Looks like a comma splice. How can this be correct?

+1 D

People is a countable noun. We need "number", not "amount". A, B, and E out.
The idiom is "THE...number", not "number".

hmm "the" is definitely a very good catch. But what is your opinion about "It is hoped"?

D is the correct answer, although i got it wrong.

Hopefully is almost always wrong in GMAT. "it is hoped" is preferred. The "it" here is a "placeholder it" and does not require an antecedent.

Crick

I chose D based on the amount and number idiom elimination...
But what is this placeholder "it" concept??? I mean how to recognize a placeholder pronoun from the usual pronoun which needs an antecedent???

Got it wrong..
Even i have the same question. What is this placeholder "it" concept and y is Hopefully almost always wrong in GMAT??

Firstly I took A but then sow the incorrect "amount of people" and took D.

I was struggling with C or D....good point...of "the number".
After considering this i will go with D

But i also have the same question how to recognize a "placeholder pronoun"??

confused between C and D.
I would go with D

In D , "it is hoped" sounds awkward to me, but better than "many of large number of"

Can anybody cite some examples proving use of "hopefully" Wrong?
C is straightforward ,why go for complicated D...

Hi,
In the original question both of the choices C, and D have "the number"
Apparently the question was posted with "the" missing from C.

Hi DmitryFarber.

Could you please explain why (C) is wrong and (D) is correct?

KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

D

People can be individually counted, so they come in numbers, as in (C) and (D). That means (A), (B), and (E), which all use amount, are incorrect. And strictly speaking, the adverb hopefully cannot be used to mean "it is hoped." (Though most of us use it this way in eveiyday speech, standard written English has more rigorous requirements.) That knocks out (C). Hopefully can modify only a single verb or adjective-not an entire sentence-in this case, the verb prove. So (D) is correct, with "it is hoped" and "the large number (of people)".

Isn't the "it" ambiguous in the para?

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Shreshtha55 , a belated welcome to GMAT Club!

No, "it" is not ambiguous. The phrase "it is hoped"

1) commonly replaces the adverb "hopefully," which is often misused in English.

HERE is a good post on the mistaken use of hopefully.

Correct: The lost hiker thought he saw city lights ahead and looked hopefully towards the horizon.
Incorrect and common: Hopefully, the lost hiker will find the road.

2) The "it" in "it is hoped" does not mean much.
It is raining today.
What is raining? The weather? Weather does not rain.

Similarly, in "it is hoped", IT is a placeholder, or a "dummy" pronoun, or an antecedent.
Please, do not worry about the terminology.

The pronoun IT does not need an antecedent.
The pronoun IT is part of an idiomatic construction in English: It is _____

HERE is a thread that deals directly with the issue.
There are good expert posts on the usage of IT (and that -- I have just used a similar construction with the word "There").
Please read posts by the experts on both pages of that linked post.

I hope that helps.

Hi Experts,

I have a query, how the verb is linked.
According to me there are total 3 things about the psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy... (1) requires far fewer hours
(2) costs far less money than traditional psychoanalysis
(3) so will, it is hoped, prove to be an effective treatment for....

why we have linked all the three with the 'and' in a construction such as "Subject Verb1 and Verb2 and Verb3. This construction deviates from the basic usage. Otherwise we should have created the next independent clause with the use of Verb3 after "comma + and".

Please clarify.