As one step in their plan to engender greater goodwill in the communit

Question

As one step in their plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, the town council organized a series of public meetings when residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, a tendency to award contracts to cronies, and their failure to follow through on promised reforms.

A. As one step in their plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, the town council organized a series of public meetings when residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, a tendency to award contracts to cronies, and their failure to follow through on promised reforms.

B. As one step in its plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, the town council organized a series of public meetings at which residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, a tendency to award contracts to cronies, and a failure to follow through on promised reforms.

C. As one step in its plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, the town council organized a series of public meetings at which residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, tendency to award contracts to cronies, and failing to follow through on promised reforms.

D. As one step in its plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, a series of public meetings was organized by the town council so that residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, a tendency to award contracts to cronies, and a failure to follow through on promised reforms.

E. The town council, as one step in their plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, organized a series of public meetings for residents at which they could air grievances about their opacity of decision making, tendency to award contracts to cronies, and failure to follow through on promised reforms.

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Aishyk97 · Answer

Hi! Can someone please explain the OA.

And the preference for B over C?

sivapavanr1 · Answer

Option B is the most appropriate choice because it maintains consistency in terms of subject-verb agreement and pronoun usage. Here's a breakdown of the sentence:

- "As one step in its plan to engender greater goodwill in the community" introduces the purpose or objective of the town council's action.
- "the town council" is the subject of the sentence, and since it is a singular entity, the pronoun "its" is used to maintain agreement.
- "organized a series of public meetings" is the main action performed by the town council.
- "at which residents could air grievances" specifies the purpose or function of the public meetings, indicating that the residents were given an opportunity to express their complaints.
- "about the opacity of decision making, a tendency to award contracts to cronies, and a failure to follow through on promised reforms" describes the grievances that residents could voice during the public meetings. This phrase lists three specific concerns mentioned by the residents.

Overall, option B provides a grammatically correct and coherent sentence structure that effectively conveys the intended meaning.

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VibhuMishra · Answer

"As one step in its plan to ........" is a modifier - what is it modifying exactly?

The town council organised..........or a series of meetings was organised..................Both ways seems plausible!

anyone please help

Aishyk97 · Answer

Hi thank you for the response.

I caught the SVA.

Is B preferred over C because of a parallelism issue in the elements?

I thought opacity/tendency and failing were parallel too.

Aishyk97 · Answer

Hi,
I can help you with the modifier issue.
The rule is: if a sentence opens with a modifier phrase, whatever comes after the sentence is modified by the phrase.

In this case, only town council can follow the phrase.

Ask yourself in whose plan?
The town council. It cannot be a series of meetings.

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gmat1210 · Answer

The first part of the sentence is a modifier. What should follow immediately after the fist comma should be the subject and that is "town council", and this is a singular subject. So, options A & D are out because of the usage of 'their' for "town council".

From B,C & D, we need to check for parallel structure. All the three items carried out by '"town council" must be parallel either in terms of noun or verb.

Only Option B is written in correct for of parallelism i.e. Opacity, tendency and failure, all of which are noun forms. <-- CORRECT OPTION

Option C: Opacity, tendency and  failing . Here failing is in verb form <-- INCORRECT

Option D: Although the parallel form is correct, the sentence is written in passive form. Hence, B is more suitable than D. Therefore, B is the correct option.

I hope this explanation helps.

Bunuel · Answer

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KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

(B)

Step 1: Read the Original Sentence Carefully, Looking for Errors

When faced with choices that are this long, it is often easier to focus on one element of the sentence at a time. The opening phrase says something is happening as “one step in their plan.” Whose plan? The town council’s—but a council is singular and must be represented by the singular pronoun “its.” If you didn’t notice this error in reading the sentence, a vertical scan of the beginnings of the answer choices shows a split between “its plan” and “their plan,” showing that whether this pronoun is singular or plural is one issue to consider and a good starting point.

Step 2: Scan and Group the Answer Choices

There’s a 2-3 split; (A) and (E) use the plural pronoun “their,” while (B), (C), and (D) use the singular “its.”

Step 3: Eliminate Choices Until Only One Remains

Eliminate (A) and (E) for using the incorrect plural pronoun. Scan the remaining choices in parallel until you see a difference. (D) has “a series of public meetings” after the comma, indicating that the series of meetings sought to engender greater goodwill. This isn’t logical, so eliminate this choice. The difference between (B) and (C) comes in the list at the end. Examine the list for parallel structure and notice the lack of parallel structure in (C) with “the opacity . . . tendency . . . and failing.” The list in (B) has parallel structure, and this choice is correct.

TargetKellogg2024 · Answer

A. As one step in  their  plan to engender greater goodwill in the community,  the town council  organized a series of public meetings when residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, a tendency to award contracts to cronies, and their failure to follow through on promised reforms.  - Town council is singular. therefore, pronoun-antecedent error

B. As one step in its plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, the town council organized a series of public meetings at which residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, a tendency to award contracts to cronies, and a failure to follow through on promised reforms.  -

C. As one step in its plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, the town council organized a series of public meetings at which residents could air grievances about  the opacity  of decision making,  tendency  to award contracts to cronies,  and failing  to follow through on promised reforms.  - opacity and tendency are nouns, whereas, failing is a verb. Therefore, parallelism error

D. As one step in  its  plan to engender greater goodwill in the community,  a series of public meetings  was organized by the town council so that residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, a tendency to award contracts to cronies, and a failure to follow through on promised reforms.  - is is incorrectly referring back to a series of public meetings

E.  The town council , as one step in  their  plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, organized a series of public meetings for residents at which they could air grievances about their opacity of decision making, tendency to award contracts to cronies, and failure to follow through on promised reforms.  - their is incorrectly referring to the singular town council

Aishyk97 · Answer

Hi,

I believe your reasoning for C is incorrect.

"Failing" on its own is not a verb. Here failing is a gerund - a noun in the -ing form.

The real problem is that on the GMAT as I have seen: standard nouns parallelism i.e., stand noun // standard noun is preferred to standard noun // gerund.
Further in option B each standard noun is preceded by the article 'a', this keeps the parallelism crisp and therefore it is preferred.

TargetKellogg2024 · Answer

Hi, Thank you for bringing this up. Option C - As one step in its plan to engender greater goodwill in the community, the town council organized a series of public meetings at which residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making, tendency to award contracts to cronies, and failing to follow through on promised reforms. The sentence reads - residents could air grievances about the opacity of decision making -> Here, "the opacity" is indisputably a noun residents could air grievances about tendency to award contracts to cronies -> Here, "tendency" is indisputably a noun residents could air grievances about failing to follow through -> Here, "failing" could act as noun or verb (modifier). Consider this - Q. Residents could air grievances about "something". What is this "something"? Ans: "Failing to follow through" - acts as a nous But, "failing" can act as a verb modifier here - Q. What was the consequence of the town council's organizing a series of public meetings? Ans: "Failing to follow through" - acts as a verb modifier Obviously, if "failing" acts as a verb modifier, the rest of the sentence falls apart, and one can say that the only logical implication of the usage of "failing" in the sentence is as a gerund. This way, we can say that GMAT prefers standard nouns over gerunds. However, to say so would be incorrect. Refer to the OG below - https://gmatclub.com/forum/building-on- ... 30798.html Here, in the OG correct answer, the parallel list is: the cultivation of..., the harvesting of..., and the exploitation of.. Clearly, OG does not have a strong preference of standard nouns over gerund.

Aishyk97 · Answer

Hi,
Thank you for your response. I just have a few follow-up clarifications.

Q. Residents could air grievances about "something". What is this "something"?
Ans: "Failing to follow through" - acts as a nous

But, "failing" can act as a verb modifier here -
Q. What was the consequence of the town council's organizing a series of public meetings?
Ans: "Failing to follow through" - acts as a verb modifier - I did not understand this part. The answer to a what question is always a noun. So I do not see how failing could act as a verb.

Obviously, if "failing" acts as a verb modifier, the rest of the sentence falls apart, and one can say that the only logical implication of the usage of "failing" in the sentence is as a gerund. This way, we can say that GMAT prefers standard nouns over gerunds. However, to say so would be incorrect. Refer to the OG below -
https://gmatclub.com/forum/building-on- ... 30798.html

Here, in the OG correct answer, the parallel list is:
the cultivation of..., the harvesting of..., and the exploitation of..

Clearly, OG does not have a strong preference of standard nouns over gerund.

I agree that standard nouns are parallel to gerunds. My argument is that when there is an option of having all standard nouns, then we should use standard nouns over gerunds.

In the question you tagged, as pointed out by e-gmat
Harvesting” is the noun form of the verb “harvest”. There is no noun form of “harvest” that ends in “-ion”. However, the verbs “cultivate” and “exploit” do have their noun forms ending with “-ion” – “cultivation” and “exploitation”. That makes all these three noun parallel to each other even if “harvesting” looks a little different from the rest.
Choice A uses cultivating/harvesting of/exploiting
- The use of "harvesting of" breaks the parallelism.

Choice B is the only choice where all the entities appear in one uniform manner – “cultivation of”, “harvesting of”, and “exploitation of” – all noun forms followed by “of”.
The same way each noun is followed by of in this question, the article 'a' is preceded by each noun.

Also, in the question you have shared option A has another clear issue which is the use of like for examples.

All in all, it was a good learning.
Hopefully, I catch it under the pressure of the exam.

TargetKellogg2024 · Answer

Hi, Answer to "what" can be a noun, verb, or adjective. Eg. - Q1. What colour is the sky? Ans: Blue - adjective Q2. What did you do yesterday? And: I studied - Verb Nevertheless, this discussion has let me explore my own notes

Looking forward to many more such constructive discussions on this forum! P.S. - I'd recommend you to go through this OG. Quite a bit of learning!! https://gmatclub.com/forum/early-admini ... 42622.html

As one step in their plan to engender greater goodwill in the communit

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As one step in their plan to engender greater goodwill in the communit

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