tenaman10 wrote:
Child care already a solid part of the employee benefits package at many companies, more businesses are focusing on a newer family benefit known as elder care, servicing for older dependents.
(A) Child care
(B) With child care
(C) Child care as
(D) Being the Child care was
(E) With child care’s being
Why A is wrong ??
This question is drawn from a 1997 GMAT Test (Disclosed Edition, Test Code 42). The credited response is B.
What's wrong with A? Well, the first thing we note about the sentence is that it contains a comma. What does this mean? What is the thing before the comma? What's the thing after the comma? Is the thing before the comma modifying the thing after the comma? Is the thing after the comma modifying the thing before the comma? Do we have two complete sentences joined by a conjunction? What's going on?
The part before the comma is not a clause. A clause must always contain a
subject and a
verb. Although "Child care" might be a valid subject, there is no verb. Accordingly, we can conclude that it is a phrase and, therefore, it is a modifier.
Can the phrase "Child care already a solid part..." effectively modify "most businesses?" Do we think that most businesses are child care? Certainly not.
What about C? We have added the word "as." Does this improve the sentence? Not really. We are still left with the bad modifier, and it's unclear what function the as serves. Is it saying that child care == already a solid part... ?
What about D? Well, D includes a subject and a verb. Accordingly this is now a clause rather than a phrase. However, this is a bad choice. The first clause doesn't make any sense, and it is joined to the second clause not with a conjunction but with a simple comma. Two complete sentences cannot be joined with a comma. This error, called a comma splice, is unacceptable. We can eliminate D.
What about E? This choice similarly makes no sense. "With child care's being" -- so there is a being and it belongs to child care? More businesses are with this being?
B is the best answer. The word "with" can mean "characterized by or having." Does it make sense to assert that more businesses already have child care as a solid part of the employee benefits package? Yes, I think it does.
Remember that on many GMAT Sentences the goal is not to find a good choice, but rather to find four bad choices and eliminate them.