At the heart of euro crisis is Mrs. Merckel’s lack of quick or bold

c) the lack of quick or bold reaction by Mrs. Merckel, the reason that the downward spiral on the euro has not halted.

"Mrs. Merkel" cannot be the object of the sentence or the logic of the sentence is affected . So eliminate B and D
"the reason...." is the object of the subject " the heart of the eurocrisis.." for A E and C. So let's keep those for now.

"Mrs. Merkel's lack of..." maintains an object in A, but "lack of halting of downward spiral" is not grammatical. So that leaves us E and C.

E alters the meaning of the sentence to "Causation" rather than preventing the further deterioration of the Euro.

That leaves us with our answer C.

Now give me that month's Verbal freebie! I really need it.

@Anasthaesium: great response and an extra bonus for the added humor. Merckel may be keeping mum intentionally since a weak euro is a definite boost to Germany's exports. Germany's exports did increase by 15% from August (85B euros) to September (95B euros) as Euro's exchange rate slipped from $1.4 to $1.3.

You win the Verbal 2 (SC)OG solutions. Please register on e-GMAT and notify us. We will upgrade your account.
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In another post @daagh raised a good point regarding "what is this emphasis on meaning" and why the renewed interest. Below is my response to the same. Hopefully, this would help you as well.

In my opinion, (understanding) Meaning has been central to solving Sentence Correction questions since OG 11 and therfore an integral part e-GMAT Sentence Correction course. OG 12, released in April 2010, continued this emphasis and had more questions in which one had to understand the intent of the sentence based on the original choice to be able to respond correctly.

However, this emphasis on meaning came as a surprise to quite a few individuals and a few experts. People on GMATClub and BTG panicked (you can read their posts on the forums) after realizing they could no longer do well in Sentence Correction purely on grammatical issues without understand the intended meaning. This was further accentuated when GMAC openly stated that a sentence correction questions may have more than one grammatically correct answer choice, but only one of them would communicate the intended meaning.

Since the egmat SC course is probably one of the few courses that has such a clear emphasis on meaning, and since a good amount of confusion still exists, we decided to share our research through various ways. We have a free concept accessible to everyone who registers on e-GMAT. We also conduct a free live session on "importance on meaning" every month. In addition we decided to write this article with the aim to:

1. Help those who have been ignoring the meaning and primarily been following the splits approach to understand the various strategies that GMAC uses to distort the meaning.

2. Provide them with an modified approach (we call it the e-GMAT 3 step process) so that they can attain higher accuracy on the GMAT.

we have only detailed one approach in this article so far and will be outlining other approaches over the next 10 days. Those who are planning to take the exam in the next 4-5 days can download the document and go through the OG questions that we have outlined in the table.

Anasthaesim

I also choose C for the answer, But I did not choose E at the first sight because it lacks main verb, E just includes phrase without any main verb to constitu
te a sentence. But I can not recognise the litte change in intended meaning of E. This problem appears in grammatical errors. Do u think it is right ?
strong like your comment

Hi Bichhang,

Its great that you could arrive at the correct choice. However, it would be great if you could also see the pertinent errors in choice E. As you know when you are practicing Sentence Correction, it is equally important to eliminate the wrong choices for the right reasons. So let's analyze choice E a bit more. Following is the complete sentence with choice E.

At the heart of euro crisis is the lack of quick or bold reaction by Mrs. Merckel, resulting in the downward spiral of the euro.

First of all, can you analyze the sentence structure of this sentence. Can you tell me the subject-verb pairs in this sentence?

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Payal

In this question I didn’t choose C because I wanted to put the sentence “the reason…..” close to “lack of quick and or bold reaction” I choose A only for that reason though I was also confused about the wording in Choice A. So, Between A and C I chose A. In both sentences I had confusion. In A --- Wording issue. In C-placing the modifier close to the entity which it is modifying.
Now please give me suggestion what I will do in such a situation because I have already got many questions which were canceling the options depending the reason I have already mentioned for C

Hi Raihanuddin,

It’s great that you were able to eliminate three incorrect options. Also, your doubt regarding the wording of option A is valid.

Now, you have correctly said that the modifier should be placed as close to the modified entity as possible. Accordingly, let’s look at the question and find out more about this modifier and modified entity in the context of choice A and C:

Question

• At the heart of euro crisis is Mrs. Merckel’s lack of quick or bold reaction, the reason for lack of halting of the downward spiral of the euro.


Choice A- … Mrs. Merckel’s lack of quick or bold reaction, the reason for lack of halting of the downward spiral of the euro

• Modifier- ‘the reason…euro.’
This is a ‘noun + noun modifier’ in which the noun is ‘the reason’ and the noun modifier is ‘for lack…. of the euro’.

• Modified Entity- As it is clear from the type of modifier, the modified entity is the one that provides us a reason for something. What is the reason for the continuation of the downfall of euro? The reason is ‘Mrs. Merckel’s lack of quick or bold reaction’.

• Let’s take a look at the sentence again:

At the heart of euro crisis is Mrs. Merckel’s lack of quick or bold reaction, the reason for lack of halting of the downward spiral of the euro.

As you can see, in this case the modifier is placed right next to the modified entity. Now let’s look at option C.


Choice C- …the lack of quick or bold reaction by Mrs. Merckel, the reason that the downward spiral of the euro has not halted.

• Modifier- ‘the reason…..’
This is a ‘noun + noun modifier’ in which the noun is ‘the reason’ and the noun modifier is ‘that the…..not halted’.

• Modified Entity- Again we have to identify the modified entity. According to this option, the reason for the continuation of the downfall of euro is ‘the lack of quick or bold reaction by Mrs. Merckel’.

• Let’s take a look at the sentence again:

At the heart of euro crisis is the lack of quick or bold reaction by Mrs. Merckel, the reason that the downward spiral of the euro has not halted.

Again the modifier is placed right next to the modified entity.


Process of Elimination

So, both these choices have placed the modifier as close to the modified entity as possible. Also, both these choices are grammatically correct. Now, to eliminate one of these we have to check which one of them communicates a logical meaning in the most concise manner.
In choice A the phrase ‘lack of halting’ does not seem to convey a logical meaning. An action either halts or does not halt. This is the problem in the wording of this option.
Since choice C removes this error, it is the correct answer.


Recommendations

Since you are facing problems in the questions that use ‘noun + noun modifiers’, I would recommend that you go through the article on the same by our team. Here is the link to the article: noun-noun-modifiers-the-most-versatile-modifier-137292.html

Hope the above discussion helps!
Regards,

Deepak.

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