Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers provide worker

219.Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers provide workers with unpaid leave so as to care for sick or newborn children.
(A) provide workers with unpaid leave so as to
(B) to provide workers with unpaid leave so as to
(C) provide workers with unpaid leave in order that they
(D) to provide workers with unpaid leave so that they can
(E) provide workers with unpaid leave and

I am slightly confused in this question.
I thought we should have a bare form of a verb " to provide".
E.g. Correct (IMO)- I require them do this.
Incorrect (IMO)-I require them to do this.

Can someone clarify on this?

require X to do Y - idiom

with that B,D left.

but B is meaning that congress is caring about children

so D - correct

My choice would be D.



‘a bill requiring employers’ should be followed by infinitive (with ‘to’). It means A, C, E are out.

Now, look at the remaining:

B: Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers to provide workers with unpaid leave so as to care for sick or newborn children.

Who should care for children? Congress? Doesn’t look right.

D: Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers to provide workers with unpaid leave so that they can care for sick or newborn children

Well, we still could say that ‘they’ may refer to employers as well as workers, but IMO, overall, the ambiguity is less here than in the case of B.

Good tricky question checks idioms and logical approach

Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers provide workers with unpaid leave so as to care for sick or newborn children.

If you look the highlighted part in the sentence you will easily find out that after 'employers' 'to' is necessary.

'Require .... that' is correct idiom expression

(A) provide workers with unpaid leave so as to :Incorrect ( not starting with 'to')
(B) to provide workers with unpaid leave so as to : Incorrect (Trap) ( so as to is not preferred much on GMAT , if you check 'AS' alone then as is used to compare clauses with similar actions which is also not correct here logically )
(C) provide workers with unpaid leave in order that they : Incorrect ( not starting with 'to')
(D) to provide workers with unpaid leave so that they can : Correct ( also fulfills 'Require ...that' correct idiomatic expression usage and starts with 'to' ) here 'they' refers to workers because if you choose 'employers' logically it will be wrong because employers will not take care of sick and newborn children . Workers will take care.
(E) provide workers with unpaid leave and : Incorrect ( not starting with 'to') wrong usage of 'and'


Kindly clarify if i have missed anything

Regrads
SG

Can someone confirm on this usage. So as for one noun & so that for more than one ??

So as to & So that : implies "in order to". But not sure on the difference in their usage.

Here "so as to" just means "in order to".

Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers provide workers with unpaid leave so as to care for sick or newbom children.

(A) provide workers with unpaid leave so as to
PROBLEM: Two issues. We need the idiom "requiring X to Y". This misses the "to". Also, "so as to care" makes it sound as if Congress is doing the caring.

(B) to provide workers with unpaid leave so as to
PROBLEM: This addresses the first issue mentioned above, but not the second.

(C) provide workers with unpaid leave in order that they
PROBLEM: This lacks the "to". Also, the idiom is "in order to", not "in order that".

(D) to provide workers with unpaid leave so that they can
ANSWER: This has the "to", and correctly places the pronoun "they", so that we know it's the workers who will be caring for their children.

(E) provide workers with unpaid leave and
PROBLEM: Lacks the "to", and also sounds like Congress is doing the caring.

Doesn't the answer require the use of subjunctive (bare infinite form of verb)

In general, the structure of subjunctive is:

that + bare infinitive

In this sentence, since requiring is not followed by that, this is a big clue that the sentence is not using subjunctive.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Subjunctive, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

"I require them do this." is correct when the mood is subjunctive but in the given problem the mood is not subjunctive.

Hi Sajal, subjunctive would actually be:

I require that they do this.

You can watch our video on Subjunctive here. Would especially draw your attention towards case-2 i this video.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Subjunctive, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

Dear GMATGuruNY DmitryFarber AjiteshArun,

Q1. (C) provide workers with unpaid leave in order that they

I just wonder whether you have ever seen "in order that" in the correct choice? Is it necessarily wrong?

Q2. According to MGMAT:

^ I just wonder why SO THAT is suspicious here. Because "she" is used twice in the sentence?

varotkorn There's nothing wrong with using "she" in both parts of the sentence. The "suspect" phrases are simply constructions that are unlikely to be correct. It's hard for me to think of a good sentence with "in order that." Also, notice that in the sentence we provide in our guide, these phrases are paired with MIGHT: "so that she might stay awake" or "in order that she might stay awake." It's especially odd to use these goal-oriented phrases not with an actual goal (stay awake) but with a possibility (might stay awake). I don't want to MIGHT do something; I want to do it!

Dear GMATGuruNY DmitryFarber IanStewart MartyTargetTestPrep AjiteshArun,

Is SO AS TO necessarily incorrect?
Have you ever seen SO AS TO in OA?

According to MGMAT:

There's nothing inherently wrong with "so as to"; it's perfectly good English. In the original question, answer A is wrong because, when it uses "so as to", the subject becomes unclear. Is it Congress caring for the children, or the workers? That kind of ambiguity is bad, and that's the kind of bigger-picture issue you should be focusing on when studying SC. The GMAT is not testing whether you can memorize which perfectly valid English phrases the test writers allegedly "like" and "do not like", and if any prep material is claiming you should memorize such phrases, that prep material is emphasizing the wrong things (and you'll probably rule out some right answers doing SC that way).

Dear IanStewart,

The reason you said above also appears in the correct choice.

OA : Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers to provide workers with unpaid leave so that they can care for sick or newborn children.

Does "they" stand for the employers, or workers?

If you were to say that the context dictates that "they" can only stand for "workers", then for the same reason you could also say that the context dictates that the subject of "so as to" in choice A. can only stand for "workers" as well.

In short, why do you see no pronoun ambiguity in choice D. but see such ambiguity (the subject for "so as to") in choice A.?

I should revise my earlier comments slightly. When you use the construction

"X is doing Y so as to Z"

then Z must explain the purpose of "doing Y". So in this sentence

"Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers provide workers with unpaid leave so as to care for sick or newborn children."

"to care for children" provides the reason why Congress is "debating a bill". That makes no sense. This sentence would make some sense:

"Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers provide workers with unpaid leave so as to ensure all points of view are heard."

Now the end of the sentence correctly describes why Congress might debate a bill. So it's not really that there's ambiguity in choice A; there's a meaning problem. I'd have a slight preference for an answer choice different from D that clarified the ambiguity with "they", but we don't have such a choice, and we can infer who it refers to by meaning.

Is this specific to this idiom? i.e. the use of 'to' prior to the base verb? I have seen instances where using 'to' signals the intent of the doer thus rendering the sentence incorrect ( b/c it suggests the doer did X TO do Y, but that's not the intended meaning).