Much of the hope for continued improvement of the economy lies in the

Hello Everyone!

Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, and narrow down the choices to the right one! This is a great example of a question that focuses more on intended meaning, and less on actual grammatical errors! First, let's take a quick scan over the options and highlight any major changes in orange:

Much of the hope for continued improvement of the economy lies in the projection of increasing consumer spending this year.

(A) projection of increasing consumer spending
(B) projection of consumers increasing spending for
(C) projected consumer spending increase
(D) consumer spending that is projected to increase
(E) increase in consumer spending that is projected for

While there seem to a lot of differences between the options, there is one area we can begin to focus in on: LOGIC. It's already clear from a quick scan of the options that each of these has a different meaning. We now need to determine what the intended meaning is, and find the option that best expresses that.

If we look at the entire original sentence, we can look for clues that tell us what our "intended meaning" should be:

Much of the hope for continued improvement of the economy lies in the projection of increasing consumer spending this year.

WHAT are people hoping will happen to improve the economy? The projection that consumer spending will increase? Or how about an actual increase in spending? It doesn't really makes sense that people would hope a projection or prediction would happen - they are more likely to hope that consumer spending actually increases. Therefore, we need to stick to options that focus on consumer spending, and less on the projections about it:

(A) projection of increasing consumer spending
(B) projection of consumers increasing spending for
(C) projected consumer spending increase
(D) consumer spending that is projected to increase
(E) increase in consumer spending that is projected for

We can eliminate options A, B, and C because they don't logically convey the intended meaning.

Now that we have it narrowed down to only 2 options, let's take a closer look at each sentence, with the non-underlined parts added in, to spot any other problems:

(D) Much of the hope for continued improvement of the economy lies in consumer spending that is projected to increase this year.

This is INCORRECT because while it's close to the intended meaning, it's still not quite there. This sentence is saying that people are putting their hope in ONLY the part of consumer spending that increases - not ALL consumer spending increasing. Since that's not really what we're going for, let's rule this out.

(E) Much of the hope for continued improvement of the economy lies in increase in consumer spending that is projected for this year.

This is CORRECT! It's clear that people are putting their hope in an all-around increase in consumer spending, which we know from the rest of the sentence is likely to happen this year.


There you have it - option E is the best choice! It's the one that most closely conveys a clear and logical meaning.


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