Citing the growing national debt, many economists have expressed

Question

Citing the growing national debt,  many economists have expressed a fear of rising government expenditure and continued use of  financial aid packages will cause an irreversible financial downturn in Croatia.

A. many economists have expressed a fear of rising government expenditure and continued use of

B. many economists have expressed a fear that rising government expenditure and continued use of

C. many economists have expressed a fear that rising government expenditure and continually using

D. a fear that many economists have expressed is that rising government expenditure and continually using

E. a fear that many economists have expressed is that rising government expenditure and continual use of

mbaapplicant2019 · Answer

In my opinion, answer is B.

The sentence start with "citing...", it means that in the main clause, subject should be a person who cites growing national debts...
=> D and E are wrong.

Option A makes me confused because no clear S-V in the main clause. Option C wrote "rising government expenditure and continually using". It's not parallel.

ritzyravin · Answer

theres no difference in A & B but the use of 'that'. Please help me understand how does that change the correctness of the sentence

aksh5900 · Answer

Can expert please explain what is the difference in using 'that' and not using 'that' in this question?

GMATNinja · Answer

Just a friendly reminder to please please ALWAYS include your source when posting a new question! I have no idea where this question comes from, and it looks pretty suspect.

There's a decent answer to the question about "that" here, though! Consider the following:

Mike has a debilitating fear of clowns. --> "fear of" is (correctly) followed by a noun 
 Mike has a debilitating fear that a clown will steal his surfboard. --> "fear that" is (correctly) followed by a clause

The word "that" has a bunch of different uses in English (as described in detail  here ), and in this case, "that" is used to subordinate a clause. There's nothing inherently wrong with saying "fear of _____", but "fear of" needs to be followed by a noun only, and not an entire clause (i.e., a phrase with a subject and a verb). In this sentence, the fear is that "rising expenditures and use of aid packages  will cause  a downturn..." -- and that's an entire clause. So we need to use "fear that", and not "fear of" in this case.

But again, don't lose any sleep over this question, since it's likely not official, and we don't know where, exactly, it came from.

I hope this helps!

jrk23 · Answer

Hello Sir,

Can you please shed some light on the option "B" and "c". How "C" is wrong and B is correct. Although i got this question correct, i want to know the exact reason for elimination option "C".
Also, please tell how in option "B" have parallelism in that part but not in option "C".

Citing the growing national debt, many economists have expressed

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Citing the growing national debt, many economists have expressed

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