Commentators and officials worry that the use of steroids is escalatin

Question

Commentators and officials worry that the use of steroids is escalating rapidly among athletes,  even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already is a negative impact to professional athletic leagues of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play .

A. even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already is a negative impact to professional athletic leagues of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play

B. even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already has a negative impact on the appearance of sportsmanship and fair play in professional athletic leagues

C. even further increasing their unfair advantage, already with negative impacts to professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play

D. even further in increasing their unfair advantage, and already negatively impacting professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play

E. even further in increasing their unfair advantage, and already negatively impacts professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play

SohGMAT2020 · Answer

Commentators and officials worry that the use of steroids is escalating rapidly among athletes,  even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already is a negative impact to professional athletic leagues of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play .

A. even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already is a negative impact to professional athletic leagues  of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play  : Incorrect : the prepositional phrase "of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play" is not placed correctly.

B. even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already has a negative impact on the appearance of sportsmanship and fair play in professional athletic leagues  : Correct : No errors 
 
C. even further increasing their unfair advantage,  already with  negative impacts to professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play : Incorrect : The sentence needs a which clause to connect the unfair advantage with negative impacts

D. even further  in increasing  their unfair advantage,  and already negatively impacting  professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play : Incorrect : Errors are highlighted

E. even further  in increasing  their unfair advantage, and already negatively impacts professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play: Incorrect : Errors are highlighted

IMO B is correct

DarkKnight800 · Answer

In my opinion the answer is B

Commentators and officials worry that the use of steroids is escalating rapidly among athletes, even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already is a negative impact to professional athletic leagues of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play.

A. even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already is a negative impact to professional athletic leagues of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play
Reason to Eliminate: The preposition “of” in the phrase professional athletic leagues of appearance conveys an illogical meaning

B. even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already has a negative impact on the appearance of sportsmanship and fair play in professional athletic leagues
Correct Choice: No Error

C. even further increasing their unfair advantage, already with negative impacts to professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play
Reason to eliminate: I think we will need something to connect the clause  already with negative….
Also the idiom impacts on is better suited than impact to

D. even further in increasing their unfair advantage, and already negatively impacting professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play
Reason to Eliminate: in increasing is incorrect. This is trying to make 3 components parallel, where the parallelism already fails with the usage of “in increasing”, since is a preposition.
Also by making the list parallel the intended meaning is lost

E. even further in increasing their unfair advantage, and already negatively impacts professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play
Reason to eliminate: Same reason as D

Dibab · Answer

Let's start with the meaning, we are told that : 
the escalating use of steroids, results in the increase in the unfair advantage between athletes who dope and those who don't (as conveyed by the -ing verb increasing which clearly in that case present the result of the sterid usage),
and that :
the unfair advantage already impacts the appearance in sportmanship in the league (here the which logically refers to the advantage)

As always when I see a pronoun like 'their' I always look at what it refers to. It logically refers to the athletes and it is no use to consider the possibily that it may refers wrongly to commentators or steroids as the use of ''their" here is the same in the 5 options.

A and B are more or less the same except for the use of is or have. Once again I am not a native so I am not always sure about the Idiom but having an impact on something is way better in my opition than being (is) an impact to. So I would clearly take B over A. For as much as I can see I don't find any mistakes in B.

For C, we said in our prior meaning analysis that the which refers to the unfair advantage and here, written as it is "already with negative impacts to professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play" doesn't precise who\what already has a negative impact, for that reason I will prefer B over C.

D completely distorts the meaning as now further is used as a verb in the following list : 'the use of steroids is escalating ... , further ... , and impacting' 
So now we have a list with non parallel elements (and impacting), plus, I'm not even sure that we can say that 'the use of steroids further in something' we may say something like 'the use of drugs furthers the risks of cardiovascular accident' but further in is I think non sensical.
Plus "further" used as a verb should take an S as "use of" is singular
Therefore if we summarize, we have a non parallel list, a distorted meaning (the unfair advantages no more have an impact), the SV agreement is not respected and the idiomatic further in is, I think, nonsensical . I'm quite sure that we can discard D.

E here the list has been rearranged so that we have parallel elements, we still have the SV agreement error if we consider further as a verb, the point of view that it is the "use of steroids" that impacted the appearance of sportmanship could be defended but would distort the primary intended meaning which makes sense (so why would we change it).
But an SV agreement is just a big no.

Therefore I go for B. Hope it is the right answer.

karnavora1 · Answer

Commentators and officials worry that the use of steroids is escalating rapidly among athletes, even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already is a negative impact to professional athletic leagues of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play.

The correct idiom is impact on and not impact to, hence A & C are out.
D & E use further in increasing which makes the sentence incorrect because that element distorts the meaning as well as makes the sentence un-parallel

A. even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already is a negative impact to professional athletic leagues of appearance of sportsmanship and fair play

B. even further increasing their unfair advantage, which already has a negative impact on the appearance of sportsmanship and fair play in professional athletic leagues

C. even further increasing their unfair advantage, already with negative impacts to professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play

D. even further in increasing their unfair advantage, and already negatively impacting professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play

E. even further in increasing their unfair advantage, and already negatively impacts professional athletic leagues' appearance of sportsmanship and fair play

nayas96 · Answer

Can someone please explain the "which" refers to which noun, it seems to be referring to the use of steroids?

Kindly please clarify my reasoning

gloomybison · Answer

generis 
Doesn't the use of "which" create ambiguity in A & B? it can be referring to advantages, athletes, use of steroid etc...How can do we decide whether which is a no-go or acceptable?

DarkKnight800 · Answer

nayas96  and  gloomybison  - In this case "which" refers to "unfair advantage". In most scenarios, "which" will refer to the preceding noun. As I said it works in "MOST" scenarios and not all. Best way is to link it to meaning and which what can "which" refer to logically

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  gloomybison  and  nayas96 ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, in A and B "which" refers to "unfair advantage"; please remember, "who/whose/whom/which/where", when preceded by a comma, refer to the noun just before the comma.

We hope this helps.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Commentators and officials worry that the use of steroids is escalatin

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