Concerned about the dangers posed to civil aviation by migratory birds

Question

Concerned about the dangers posed to civil aviation by migratory birds, the national aviation administration and several wildlife protection societies have collaborated in a project  aimed at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, and the training of pilots to avert  and prevent collisions.

A. aimed at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, and the training of pilots to avert

B. aiming to monitor flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, and the training of pilots to avert

C. aimed at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, and training pilots to avert

D. aiming to monitor flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightly coordinating when commercial air traffic is to take off and land, and to train pilots to avoid

E. to aim at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, to coordinate tight landing and take-off times for commercial air traffic, but to train pilots to avert

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Shadyshades · Answer

The correct idiom is "Aim at". So, we can eliminate option B and D.
Option E follows the faulty and unnecessary parallelism...  to aim  at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese,  to coordinate  tight landing and take-off times for commercial air traffic,  but to train  pilots

Between A and C,   option C is a better choice   as we need "training pilots" and not "training of pilots".

KeithJohnson · Answer

Ignoring the addigional information and looking at the core sentence : Concerned about the dangers posed to civil aviation by migratory birds,  the national aviation administration and several wildlife protection societies have collaborated in a project aimed at  :
1. monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, 
2. tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, 
and 
3. the training of pilots to avert and prevent collisions.

the parallelism is broken by  the training , replace it by  training  and we are done. C is the correct choice.

A, B,D, and E break parallelism

Bunuel · Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

Concerned about the dangers posed to civil aviation by migratory birds, the national aviation administration and several wildlife protection societies have collaborated in a project  aimed at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, and the training of pilots to avert  and prevent collisions.

A. aimed at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, and the training of pilots to avert

Incorrect.

This answer choice is grammatically incorrect. The first two items in the list of the sentence are unconjugated verbs ( monitoring, tightening ), but the last item is a noun ( the training ). What is tricky about this list is that the noun  the training  has the same form as the verbs, but because of the article  the (training) , the V+ing form functions as a noun, and violates the parallelism.

What helps us identify this question as a Parallelism question as well as identify the mistake is the following Stop Sign: A list of 3 items or more, separated by commas and and/or before the last item.

In a list of 3 or more items, all the items should be the same part of speech (all nouns, all verbs, or all adjectives).

B. aiming to monitor flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, and the training of pilots to avert

Incorrect.

This answer choice repeats the Parallelism mistake in the original question, and even creates another Parallelism mistake mistake, resulting in an illogical sentence.

In the corrected sentence, the modifier  aimed  is changed to a V+ing form  aiming  and the first verb in the list is changed to a to V form to  monitor . As a result, the already faulty parallelism of the original list of the project's aims is damaged even more because the second and third items ( tightening, the training of ) are still in Ving form and are different parts of speech ( tightening  = verb;  the monitoring of  = noun)

Even if  aiming  (and not  to monitor ) is seen as the first item in the parallelism, logical or grammatical problems remain. The original sentence presents a list of the aims of the collaborative project. Therefore it is not logical for  aiming  to be included as one of the items in the list. The resulting sentence is also grammatically incorrect: one cannot say  aiming tightening coordination...and aiming the training of pilots.

C. aimed at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightening coordination of landing and take-off times of commercial air traffic, and training pilots to avert

This answer choice corrects the Parallelism mistake in the original question, by changing the noun  the training  to a non-conjugated verb  training , to match the previous items in the list ( monitoring, tightening coordination ).

What's tricky about this list is that the noun  the training  has the same form as the verbs, but because of the article  the (training) , the V+ing form functions as a noun, and violates the parallelism.

Although this answer choice is not stylistically perfect ( avert  and  prevent is a  redundancy, as these two words mean approximately the same thing), it is the only answer choice that is grammatical, logical, and has a correct parallel structure.

D. aiming to monitor flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, tightly coordinating when commercial air traffic is to take off and land, and to train pilots to avoid

Incorrect.

This answer choice is grammatically incorrect.

What helps us identify this question as a Parallelism question as well as identify the mistake is the following Stop Sign: A list of 3 items or more, separated by commas and and/or before the last item.

In a list of 3 or more items, all the items should be the same part of speech (all nouns, all verbs, or all adjectives).

The original sentence has a list of three non-parallel items:  monitoring  (V+ing verb),  tightening  (V+ing verb),  the training  (V+ing noun).

In the corrected sentence, the modifier  aimed  is changed to a V+ing form  aiming  and the first and third items in the list are changed to a to V form to monitor//to train. However, the second item tightening (V+ing) is not parallel to them.

Reading the sentence as if aiming (and not to monitor) were the first item in the parallelism doesn't solve the problem, either logically or grammatically. The original sentence presents a list of the aims of the collaborative project. Therefore it is not logical for  aiming  to be included as one of the items in the list. The resulting sentence is also grammatically incorrect: one cannot say  aiming tightly coordinating .

In addition, changing the noun phrase  landing and take-off times  to a clause  when commercial air traffic is to take off and land  is awkward and wordy.

E. to aim at monitoring flight patterns of high-flying species such as storks, herons, and geese, to coordinate tight landing and take-off times for commercial air traffic, but to train pilots to avert

Incorrect.

This answer choice is illogical, and it doesn't fit into the original sentence.

This answer choice appears to correct the Parallelism mistake in the original question, but the three actions are not logically parallel. The original sentence presents a list of the aims of the collaborative project. Therefore it is not logical for  to aim  to be included as one of the items in the list. The three logically parallel actions in this sentence are:  monitoring, coordinating, training. To aim  at only serves as the introduction to the three items which should be parallel.

In addition, the addition of the word  but  makes little sense because but usually shows an opposition or negation to something previously stated. In this case the three items in the list are meant to be aims of the project and no opposition exists among the aims stated.

Concerned about the dangers posed to civil aviation by migratory birds

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

Concerned about the dangers posed to civil aviation by migratory birds

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

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