After suffering the effects of several tsunamis, the residents of a Ja

Hi,

After suffering the effects of several tsunamis, the residents of a Japanese city built a wall on their coast over forty feet high and a mile long, a way to protect the city against another disaster.

Notice the presence of comma after long which is not underlined. The presence of comma makes choice C correct and choice B and E incorrect.

The sentence with choice B reads: After suffering the effects of several tsunamis, the residents of a Japanese city built a wall on their coast over forty feet high and a mile long, in efforts to protect the city against another disaster.

The phrase “in efforts to protect” shows the purpose why the residents built the wall on the coast. There is no reason why this purpose should be separated from the rest of the sentence by using a comma. This is not the correct structure.
Choice E is also incorrect for the same reason. When purpose is presented using “to + verb”, it is not separated from the main clause by using comma.

In Choice C, presence of comma makes the structure correct because verb-ing modifier when followed by comma modifies the entire preceding clause. In this choice, “protecting” is modifying the entire preceding clause, presenting the reason why the residents built the wall. Hence, choice C is the correct answer.

Hope this helps.
Shraddha
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KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

Of the options for this sentence, only (D) is explicitly incorrect since it distorts the meaning of the sentence (in one way suddenly suggests that there are other ways that the city is being protected). Choices (А), (В), (C), and (E) all make the final phrase, originally a way to protect the city against another disaster, a modifier. The most succinct way to introduce the modifier is to use the participle protecting, so answer choice (C) represents the best choice. You may think that a modifier in this place is not ideal, that an option such as and the wall protects the city... would be better, or that the phrasing isn't very eloquent. Regardless of whether such criticisms are true, don't waste time thinking about options that you're not given.

An 800 test taker always remembers that an answer choice doesn't need to be perfect in order to be right.
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C.

After the tsunami, the residents of a city built a wall, PROTECTING the city against another disaster.

im with E

why'd they build a wall?

they built a wall in order to protect


whyd they build a wall?

C says protecting against another disaster, awkward, changes meaning

Can some one please clarify this .
I am not able to narrow down after eliminating A , D.
SO bacially i am stuck with B, C , E

In E: The comma after long is a problem there, because the comma indicates that a modifier, an adverbial modifier using a verb+ing form is about to come to modify the entire essence of the preceding clause. However, what we have here is an infinitive. Normally a sentence does not take an infinitive after a comma.

If the comma were not there after long, I think E would be ok as it is; IMO the phrase ‘a way to protect the city against another disaster’ simply dangles without a suitable modified noun or action.
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hi sumanainampudi,

In ref to a PM

firstly what should separate out choices is COMMA right before the underlined portion.
B,D and E start with a preposition and show a break in continuity of a sentence
Only two choices - A and C - are left

lets see A first..
a way to protect - this is used as an appositive modifier and is used to modify a noun but here it does not fit

Now lets see why C is correct
protecting
this is verb+ing modifier or a present participle and when preceded by a COMMA modifies the PRECEDING clause, that is it gives some purpose etc of the clause

so C fits in here
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IMO: after the comma, a modifier is used; modifier correctly modifying a wall.

Can anyone explain why A is incorrect?


Thanks in Advance

A way is like a method, and it's not very accurate to call a wall a method.

You could also try the official question that this question is based on.
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No. It is an appositive. "A way..." is just a noun that is supposed to describe the wall.
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Really thanks AjiteshArun for your kind simple explanation and pointing out the OG question. Now I understood the logic behind it.

And thank you for the kind words, Mo2men. I think that it was a great gesture from your side to take the time to add that reply.
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The right answer is C and here is the quick way to get there. The final clause must have an action within it, or it is not a clause. "protecting" is the only option that has an action taking place, hence it is the right answer.

- Matoo

Hi Ajitesharun
The Japanese made an ATTEMPT/EFFORT to protect the city; they didn't protect it.
The correct choice(C) says that Japanese built the wall, protecting the city.

Hi AKY13,


I get your "attempt/effort" point. There are a couple of things to consider here:

1. It's really hard to say whether the wall proved effective, so it's hard to take a call on whether this was just an attempt or not (an attempt may be successful or unsuccessful).
2. The sentence really focuses on only one thing. This means that even if we go with effort, we should go with "in an effort to" and not "in efforts to". The plural efforts would imply that many "efforts" were made.

There's no real harm going through this question, but don't forget that at the end of the day, this is a (not very good) copy of an official question. Whatever we feel about the options in this question, we must make sure we understand why option C is the correct answer to that official question.
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Ajitesharun
Thanks for enlightening with the dynamics of GMAT.
Then why won't E be better than C.
"in order to protect"
To me, option E gives the intended meaning.

Again, I get what you're trying to say about option E, but we should really shift our focus to the official question now. There is no significant difference between "in order to protect" in the last option of this question and "to protect" in the last option of the official question. The non-underlined part of this question, however, is not a very good copy of the official question. In the official question, there is a problem in the meaning of option E. In this question, that particular problem is not there.

As I said earlier, there is no real harm in doing this question, but you should make sure that you are comfortable choosing C in the official question.
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Shouldn't verb+ing modifier make sense with the subject of the clause? I rejected C because I thought it doesn't make sense with the subject "residents of Japanese city".
Could you please tell me where I have faulted in my reasoning?

I don't much care for this problem. The only reason 'E' is wrong is a comma, and I can't think of an OG question where the presence of a comma is sufficient to declare an answer choice incorrect.

This question is clearly based on this official question: https://gmatclub.com/forum/for-members- ... 48494.html

I think the official question is better.
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