For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing an average of 2,275 gallons of milk each per year.

A. providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
B. providing them with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces
C. provided with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
D. provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces
E. provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce


In all options, we have subject (Holstein cows/Holstein cow...) after comma. It indicates that we have a modifier, subject....construction

In A, modifier(providing .....and milking....) refers to somebody who is providing feed and milking regularly. This modifier does not refer to the cows. Eliminate

B and C are eliminated for the same reason

In D and E, modifier(provided feed ....and milked regularly.....) correctly refers to the cows.

Split between D and E is Holstein cow(single) and Holstein cows(plural)

The sentence ( the farmer who takes care to keep them cool) is talking about cows(them)

D is eliminated

So, E is correct
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For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing an average of 2,275 gallons of milk each per year.

(A) providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
(B) providing them with high-energy feed, and milked them regularly, Holstein cow produces
(C) provided with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
(D) provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cow produces
(E) provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce

Could you help to explain why (A) is incorrect?

Present Progressive tense ("are producing") shows what is happening NOW. It is sometimes used interchangeably with the simple present tense, but present progressive indicates a continuation of the action or event.

How could (E) simple future ("will produce") be correct?

The simples form of future tense ("will produce") shows what will or what may happen at some point in the future.
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A is wrong because of wrong usage of the present participle "providing". A present participle modifier such as this one refers to the subject of the adjacent clause. However here "farmer" is NOT the subject, but the object of preposition ("For the farmer"). In option A , "providing" wrongly refers to "Holstein cow".

The use of "will" is alright with conditional structure to depict a future event with no uncertainty.

For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly': The comma before the 'and milking' confirms that it is a list of three items. If providing and milking were the only two items in a list, then the comma would not have been used, The use of the participles 'providing and milking' is not in consonance with the relative clause 'who takes care'. Add to this the typically Asian way of equating a present tense activity with a progress tense, you have solid reason for dumping A and B
Among C, D, and E, we can drop C and D for the same reasons. E remains
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What I don't understand in the question is how "cool",which is an adjective,go parallel with past participle such as provided and milked.Please help

Hello techiesam,


I would be glad to help you with your query.

Any word that modifies/describes a noun is called an adjective. Hence, cool is an adjective.

Since the verb-ed modifiers (past participle form) and the verb-ing modifiers (present participle form) also modify noun entities, they also function as adjectives.

This is the reason that cool is parallel to provided and milked.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing an average of 2,275 gallons of milk each per year.

This is a core exercise on modification and pronoun reference. The first interpretation is that provided with comfort and milked are referring to the cows rather than to the farmers, as we would hurry up to think

A. providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing -- providing and milking refer to cows. This is wrong modification and meaning.

B. providing them with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces --1 pronoun- subject number error. 2. providing them refer to the cows --wrong modification as in A.
C. provided with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing -- milking them refers to the cows --wrong modification
D. provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces -- the singular cow does not tally with the plural 'them' in the non-underlined part.
E. provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce -- correct
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you have mentioned that future tense is used to make prediction, but we have a definite figure of 2275 gallons here. IMO the figure tells us that we already have the stats and we should use present tense. Yes, no other option does it correctly and E is the most clear option. I still wanted to understand. Pl explain.
Thanks in advance.

Hello duttarupam2344,

I will be glad to help you with this one.

The sentence does mention an average of 2,275 gallons of milk each per year. But it is not so that every cow will give this amount of milk. The sentence has an inherent sense of predictions.

Those cows who kept in certain conditions are expected to give this amount of milk. There is no certainty that they will do so for sure.



Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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generis

If you could shed some light on this very official question. I am oscillating in between A and E. Please help.
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Hi warrior1991 - sure. (I like the word oscillating. )

Scroll down to highlighted heading to read why (E) is correct.

I can see a few ways to approach this question.
Let me lay out two. I used conditionals first.
I double checked by examining verbs and logic.

Conditionals.
The logic of the sentence is cause and effect—conditional.
Cows produce milk FOR the farmer who takes care of the cows.
For which farmer do cows produce milk? For the farmer who takes care of the cows.
IF the farmer takes care of the cows, the cows produce milk.

I resolved in favor of E quickly by relying on conditional structures.
Verbs in conditionals are predictable and particular.**

-- IF clause in simple present = RESULT clause must be in simple present or simple future
In the non-underlined portion we are stuck with a farmer who must do at least one thing in present tense.
IF he takes care . . .
When the IF clause is in simple present, only two options are available for the result clause: simple present or simple future.

I looked at (A)'s result clause, cows are producing a lot of milk. No good.
are producing is present continuous progressive, not simple present or simple future.

(E)'s result clause? cows will produce a lot of milk. will produce = simple future tense
Option E's IF clause is in simple present. Its RESULT clause is in simple future. E wins.

Verbs and logic

• inspect the verbs and verbals:
which ones are verbs? which ones are not working verbs?

(A) For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing a lot of milk.

In the non-underlined portion, the farmer needs to keep them [the cows] cool.
In A, what else belongs in the description of what the farmer must do?

providing [the cows] with high-energy feed
and
milking [the cows] regularly

This sentence is hella irritating.
cool refers to cows, whereas the ___ING words refer to the farmer.
(The cows are not providing themselves with feed or milking themselves.)
Is there any parallelism here?

At this point I diagrammed.

For the farmer
who keeps COWS cool
--- providing them with feed
--- and
--- milking them regularly
the cows are producing . . . .

That sentence is not logical.
It seems as if two ___ING words contribute somehow to keeping the cows cool.
Feeding and milking cows do not keep cows cool.
And the clause "cows are producing" is horrible.

Why not just "cows produce?" What is the point of "are producing"?
(Answer: there is no point. The verb choice is dumb.)

Maybe E is better. (It is.)

(E) For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce a lot of milk.

Much better.
The trick? provided and milked are not verbs.

They are past participles (verbED) that describe . . . the cows, just as cool describes the cows.
We are in better shape already.

(E) the adjectives that describe the cows may be easier to see if I repeat things that are implied, this way:

For the farmer who takes care
-- to keep cows COOL
-- [to keep cows] PROVIDED WITH FEED, and
-- [to keep cows] MILKED,
the cows will produce . . .

Cool, provided, and milked are all adjectives that describe cows.
Better yet, the descriptors are logically separate.
The farmer must keep the cows X, Y, and Z, and then the cows will produce milk.

This sentence is hard. Its structure is odd.
If you still have questions, I'll be happy to try to help.


**
Zero-conditionals
• statements of fact/ general truths
• If THIS thing happens, then THAT thing happens
• IF clause in simple present, RESULT clause in simple present
• If it rains, the reservoir rises a little.

Type 1 conditionals
• predictions about reality
• If THIS thing happens, then THAT thing WILL happen
• IF clause in simple present, RESULT clause in simple future
• If you don't get out of bed, you will be late for work

This resource, here gives a quick overview of conditionals on the GMAT. Poking around on Google for an hour will help.
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Hello Expert, I have gone through the explanations, however, I am still not convinced with the answer choice. Like I know for this question the answer is E, but how is it that on the test I can escape this kind of trap because my natural instinct would make me believe that choice A is correct;- Farmers can keep their cows cool by providing them feed and milking them.

kavach, your natural instinct would make you believe the highlighted portion above? I'm not sure that I understand the "trap" you mentioned.

I must be missing something. Try to explain to me why A is better than E.

If you believe that A is better than E, you must have reasons. What are they? (You will be forced to contend with meaning when you explain.)

Generally, let's think about what you are saying.

You naturally believe that feeding and milking a cow keeps the cow cool?

Okay. How does feeding and milking a cow keep a cow cool?

If you cannot explain how a process works, it probably doesn't.

To understand why Option E works and Option A does not, please read carefully the second bullet point in my post above,HERE.

Or are you saying that your mind does not question the logic of what you think are grammatically correct sentences?

If that situation is the case, then you have fallen into a bad habit of ignoring meaning.

Force yourself to write the meaning of every SC you practice before you pick an answer, and preferably before you look at answer choices as long as (A) is sensible. If not, use the other four to determine meaning. (Stop the timer).

The good news? You know that something is wrong. Now you can fix it.

I hope that answer helps.
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Answer E
A VS E
Both have them (plural) vs cows (plural) agreement
Ing modifier (modify previous clause) vs ed modifier (new clause)
ing is not good to modify farmers to make cow cooll they have are providing etc........
also 'will' used efficiently to show future activities

For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing an average of 2,275 gallons of milk each per year.


(A) providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing

(B) providing them with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces

(C) provided with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing

(D) provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces

(E) provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce

The core theme is to realize that the introductory phrase is a prepositional modifier and that you must keep it in the back burner for a while. Concentrate on the underlined part and try to sink it with the non-underlined Holstein cows; you will get the status of modifications and mis-modifications popping up in front of your eyes.

We will start with

A. providing -- who is providing whom with the high-energy feed? Definitely, the cows are not feeding or milking themselves. Absurd meaning -- gone
B., while milked regularly, is ok, providing is an absurd modifier -- drop
C. While provided with is ok, milking them is not - drop

Now the real task is between D and E in which the modifications are ok. Now comes the relevance of the pronoun 'them' in the introductory prepositional modifier. D is simply out and E is the eventual winner.

One should not think more than this much in this divertive question
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At first, none of the answers looks right - this is certainly a high level question. B) and D) cannot be correct, as mentioned above, because the sentence has a plural number of cows ('them') at the beginning of the sentence, and a singular number of cows at the end. A) doesn't look at all promising, because, if you interpret 'takes care', 'providing' and 'milking' to be a list of actions performed by the farmer, you expect parallelism; that is, you expect it to read: "takes care to keep them cool, provides them with high energy feed, and milks them regularly..." Unfortunately none of the answers is parallel in this sense, *so we can't interpret the underlined passage as part of a sequence of actions performed by the farmer*. The underlined passage isn't attached to the beginning of the sentence at all, in fact; it's attached to the end of the sentence. If we simply reorder the words, using what should be the correct answer (that's E), I assume), the meaning should become clear:

Provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce an average of 2,275 gallons of milk each per year for the farmer who takes care to keep them cool.

Try to do the same rearrangement with answer A) and you'll see there's a problem.
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Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-



Choice A: In Option A, "providing" and "milking" appear to be functioning as modifiers for "take care to keep them cool"; however, within the context of this sentence this modification makes no logical sense. Thus, Option A is incorrect.

Choice B: Option B repeats the error Option A makes, regarding the word "providing". Additionally, this option uses "them" to refer to the singular "Holstein Cow". Thus, Option B is incorrect.

Choice C: Option C repeats the error Option A makes, regarding the word "milking". Furthermore, this answer choice utilizes an incorrect verb tense, present continuous, in the verb phrase "are producing". Thus, Option C is incorrect.

Choice D: Option D repeats the same pronoun error that Option B displays. Thus, Option D is incorrect.

Choice E: Option E conveys the intended meaning of the sentence that if a farmer takes care of Holstein cows in certain ways, the cows will provide a certain quantity of milk. Moreover, this answer choice also uses one of the two tenses that can be used to portray a causal relationship, simple present or simple future. Thus, Option E is correct.

Hence, E is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of “Simple tenses on GMAT”, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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GMATNinja egmat GMATNinjaTwo VeritasKarishma Bunuel

Hi experts,

Could you please help me in understanding why "are producing" in option A is wrong?

What if the meaning that I want to convey from this sentence is that for the farmers who fulfilled certain conditions (such as milking, providing high-energy feed etc.), the cows are producing an average of 2275 gallons per year FOR NOW.

What if I want to say that this is not a general truth and that I am not sure about the future (in which case "will" would have made sense)? All I am sure about is the present scenario.

Note the first non-underlined part of the sentence.

"For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool,"

Simple present is used. The sentence has a conditional structure.

If the farmer does A, B and C, the cows produce ...
or
If the farmer does A, B and C, the cows will produce ...

You can use simple present (zero conditional) or simple future (first conditional). You cannot use present continuous since it shows an ongoing action.
This post gives you the various conditional statement structures: https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2015/1 ... nals-gmat/
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