gmattokyo wrote:
Within a cross-functional team environment, employees are exposed to a variety of perspectives; to see the concern of other departments is starting to realize the importance of the entire company working together to achieve its goals.
(A) perspectives; to see the concern of other departments is starting to realize the importance of the entire company working together to achieve its goals
(B) perspectives; to see the concern of other departments is realizing the importance of the entire company working together to achieve its goals
(C) perspectives; seeing the concern of other departments is to start to realize the importance of the entire company working together to achieve its goals
(D) perspectives; to see the concern of other departments is to start realizing the importance of the entire company working together to achieve its goals
(E) perspectives; seeing the concern of other departments is to realize the importance of the entire company working together to achieve its goals
I'm happy to give my 2¢ on this question.
First of all, it's strange to me that so much is underlined and repeated unnecessarily --- that certainly would not be the case on the real GMAT. GMAC is precise and economical about what gets underlined and repeated. In a more GMAT-like form, this question would appear as follows:
Within a cross-functional team environment, employees are exposed to a variety of perspectives; to see the concern of other departments is starting to realize the importance of the entire company working together to achieve its goals.
(A) to see the concern of other departments is starting to realize
(B) to see the concern of other departments is realizing
(C) seeing the concern of other departments is to start to realize
(D) to see the concern of other departments is to start realizing
(E) seeing the concern of other departments is to realizeOf course, writing in this more GMAT-like form reveals that this SC is really a one-trick pony --- it just has the contrast between infinitive vs. gerund in the verbs. Obvious, the verbs "to see" and "starting" must be in parallel, so the only possible option is D.
Some of the more straightforward SC question in the
OG only have a single grammatical issue, but almost all
OG SC questions have two different grammatical points alternating among the answer choices. For example, if, in addition to the infinitive vs. gerund changes in the verb, the question also
(a) alternated the correct pronoun "its" with the tempting mistake "their",
and/or
(b) alternated the correct "importance of" with something tempting like "importance for", "importance to", etc.
and/or
(c) alternated the correct independent phrase "employees are exposed to.." with the incomplete participial phrase "employed, exposed to..."
then that would be much more GMAT SC-like. The GMAT SC tends to juggle a number of "balls" at once. It's very important to keep that in mind when you solve SC.
Here's a blog about infinitive phrases, a quite common structure on GMAT SC:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/infinitive ... -the-gmat/Here's a blog about participial phrases, and that all-too-common mistake of using only a participial phrase in a construction in which a full independent clause is required
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/participle ... -the-gmat/Please let me know if any one reading this has any further questions.
Mike
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Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test PrepEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)