Noting that the price of oil and other fuel components, a major factor

Noting that the price of oil and other fuel components, a major factor in the cost structure of
an airline, have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic
about their outlook for the upcoming quarter.

Highlighted subject is singular thus we need singular verb, whereas in A and B plural verb is used. Thus, we can eliminate A and B straight.

Among C,D, and E.

Has risen and continue to rise are redundant together -- continue to rise is sufficient to tell that process started in the past and still in progress.

So we can eliminate D.

Between C and E.

In E pronoun their is referring to the company management, a noun, but that noun is singular. Thus, E is also incorrect.

So C is the winner and error free choice.

• have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their
• have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about the
• will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about the
• has risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their
• will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their

Dear saharshbagaria,
My friend, I don't know that you should write your own questions yet. Do you realize all the spacing mistakes you made with your punctuation? Please master the subtleties of spacing and punctuation before your compose your application essay, because these mistakes simply telegraph a lack of familiarity with the language, and cast doubt on otherwise well-spoken English.

Even leaving those aside, this is not a very GMAT-like question. There are aspect that are good --- certainly, the SVA error, singular subject followed by plural nouns in the modifier --- that's good. The use of the plural pronoun for the collective singular "company management" --- that is a typical GMAT SC error, a very good feature of this sentence. I assume you also were thinking that "has risen and will continue to rise" was wrong because it was redundant, and I would dispute this. Yes, technically, logically, "will continue to rise" implies a rise in the past. Nevertheless, "has risen and will continue to rise" is a rhetorically acceptable way to underscore the ongoing nature of the increase. That would be very natural in colloquial English and in news writing. Finally, I'm not sure that "noting" is the very best verb in this context. This raise the subtle question of context: in what context is the sentence spoken or written, and the speaker has what kind of access to the decisions of the airline? If this is, say, summary of a press release, in which the airline mentioned the rise in prices, then a better verb would be "citing." "Noting" is more the action of an individual speaker, and less a corporate action.

It's very hard to write SC practice questions that, in every way, adhere to the very high standards of the GMAT.

I hope all this helps.
Mike

Sir ,

This is a question from my GMAT blue book (which is said to be 700-800 question ). I also selected choice D . But after looking at the answer which was C i got a feeling when we say continue to rise it indirectly means it has risen only . So it was redundant answer . I had a doubt about the approach so i posted this.

hi mike
firstly Thanks for penning your thoughts. i appreciate your point regarding "has risen and will continue to rise". i feel that if i accept C as answer then somewhere the original intent (the one in option A) gets changed. don't you think that such a change in meaning in not acceptable
i would also like to point out that this SC is from MANHATTAN gmat

hey Mike !
I always get confused when we have "of" in the subject.
here the subject is "the price of oil and other fuel components"
so will it be singular or plural ? how do we infer it as ?
price of x, and price of Y ?
or
price of X and Y ?

Thanks

Dear aditya8062,
Ah, yes! I did a websearch, and so it is a MGMAT CAT question. It's funny: I was inclined not to give it the benefit of the doubt because it was labeled "self-made" and because of all the punctuation mistakes. Those punctuation mistakes make anything look of poorer quality.

Logically, "will continue to rise" means that the rise was happening in the past and will happen in the future. Past and future are covered.

Ordinarily, including more words, words that don't add to the logical meaning, is redundant. This is a rare exception in which the phrase with the extra words, "has risen and will continue to rise," does not sound redundant. Instead, this is used for rhetorical emphasis.

This is an extremely subtle point: in changing from "has risen and will continue to rise" to "will continue to rise," what has changed? Has the strict logical meaning changed? Absolutely not. What has changed is, one might say, a certain amount of the "rhetorical punch" of the sentence, but that is not necessarily something we need to preserve. Also notice, strictly speaking, the question doesn't ask us to choose between those two options --- other mistakes (SVA & the pronoun mismatch) are more than enough to lead to (C). That's why I don't think this question has a "meaning" problem.

Dear saharshbagaria,
Do you understand the pronoun problem that makes (D) completely unacceptable? The subject "company management" is singular, and "their" is plural. That's a 100% wrong pronoun error. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-pronoun-traps/

Second point: you need to master spacing with respect to punctuation. You need to capitalize the pronoun "I" wherever it appears in the sentence. Never never put a space before a comma or a period or an exclamation mark or a question mark. One space after a comma, two spaces after anything that ends a sentence. No matter how good your English is, if you make mistake such as this in your written English, people are going to underestimate you.

Final point: my friend, do you realize that posted an MGMAT question, and claimed that is was "self-made"? Technically, that's plagiarism. I don't think it is at all likely that MGMAT would sue you for infringement, but technically, they would have grounds to do so. Realize that plagiarism is considered a huge ethical issue in academia, and if someone ever thought you were doing this intentionally, that could destroy your hopes for admission somewhere. You need to be very careful with any claim about what is your own work.

Dear adymehta29,
My friend, I would also recommend that you read the second point above. It's important to do everything you can so that people who read your writing will respect you.

The word "of" is a preposition, and it begins a propositional phrase, a modifier. A prepositional phrase is an example of "fluff" --- something that is not essential to the fundamental SVA of a sentence. We have to put a mental parenthesis around it and ignore it when we are determining SVA. When you need to determine SVA, always 100% ignore anything following the word "of," anything inside a parenthesis. The phrase "the price of X" is always singular, regardless of the contents of X.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Hi Mike,

How come " was" past tense was used when its for upcoming time?

Dear vietnammba,
My friend, the word "was" doesn't appear in this sentence at all. Do you mean the word "has"?

The two verbs, in different tenses, are in parallel:
// has risen
and
// will continue to rise

The "has" is part of the past perfect verb, "has risen," but is not part of the future tense verb at all. See this article for more information on the perfect tense.
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-verb- ... ct-tenses/

Does this answer your question?
Mike

Hi Mike,

Sorry I should have been more specific about my question, I got the first part of the sentence but I am confused about the way past tense is used in the second part: the company management was pessimistic about the ... .

But then i think, they might have had that pessimissism in a meeting in the past and in the meeting they thought ..will increase. Is it logical?

Thank you Mike.

Dear vietnammba,
I'm happy to answer, my friend. First of all, let me remind you: one aspect of being an excellent student is asking excellent questions --- clear, thorough, unambiguous. Every single time you post a single thought in this forum, make it shine with your best effort. Make a habit of bring excellence to every last detail of your preparation. I have heard wise people say, "How you do anything is how you do everything." Make excellence a thorough habit in your life, so that you bring this high level of performance to your GMAT and to your career.

Here's the OA
Noting that the price of oil and other fuel components, a major factor in the cost structure of an airline, will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about the outlook for upcoming quarter.

You know, my friend, I hadn't noticed it, because it wasn't tested in any of the splits, but you're perfectly right. There is something "off" about the tenses here. The "noting that" essentially introduced indirect speech, which requires the sequence of tenses:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/sequence-o ... orrection/

The fact that we have present perfect ("has risen") and simple future ("will continue") inside the "that" clause strongly suggests that the main verb should be present tense.

If we retain the past tense "was" as the main verb, we need to adjust the tenses inside the "that" clause ---
Noting that the price of oil and other fuel components, a major factor in the cost structure of an airline, [color=#00a651]would [/color]continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about the outlook for upcoming quarter.

My friend, this is a very funny thing about test questions. GMAC does an extensive statistical analysis on its questions. So does Magoosh. So does (I assume) MGMAT --- they must, because they have excellent questions! This statistical analysis indicates problematic questions when, for example, high-performing students are consistently choosing an answer other than the OA, or when students across levels have no clear consensus on an answer. This question has a very clear answer: the elements tested in the splits (SVA & pronoun problems) very clearly isolate (C) as the only possible answer. The issue you are raising here is in the "untested" part of the question, something that remains unchanged in all five answer choices. In the statistical analysis of questions, that's the easiest thing to slip through the cracks. I have certain seen even official question that were perfectly valid, in terms of a clear and unambiguous answer choice, but which had some questionable elements in the non-tested part of the question. Those are rare, and I don't think I have ever seen an official GMAT question in which something in the non-tested part is just plain wrong. I have tremendous respect for the folks at MGMAT, but I think I would say: the tense in the non-tested part of this question is dangerously close to out-and-out wrong.

Good job spotting something problematic here! I think you are quite right!
Mike

Noting that the price of oil and other fuel components, a major factor in the cost structure of an airline, have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their outlook for the upcoming quarter.

A) have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their
B) have risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about the
C) will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about the
D) has risen and will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their
E) will continue to rise, the company management was pessimistic about their

Notwithstanding other errors, company 'management' is singular and therefore, its pronoun cannot be 'their'. That is the reason we can dislodge A, D, and E.

In B, 'have risen and will continue' is redundant.

C remains.

Since we're talking about Price of (something) the verb cannot be have.
So we can eliminate A and B

The collective noun, "company management" will not have the pronoun their, so we can eliminate D and E.
Hence the answer is C