The Sports Medicine Programs of the Olympic Training Center, a complex

The sports medicine programs of the Olympic Training Centre is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation for international competition.

a) ....
b) is geared to enhance performance of athletes and to prepare them.
c) are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation.
d) are geared toward the enhancement of athletes' performance and toward preparing them.
e) are geared toward enhancing the performance of athletes and preparing them.

I am very confused.
There is a rule that complex and simple gerund phrases are never parallel.

I thought that 'enhancing the performance' is a complex gerund, and 'preparing them' is a simple form of it. Isn't that true?

Can you explain please?

Hello maria14ac,

I will be glad to help you out with this one.

The very basic principle of parallelism is that those elements make a parallel list that has the same role in a sentence.


Now, the rule says that a conventional noun entity CANNOT be parallel to a verb-ing form of the noun (commonly known as gerund). The reason is that a conventional noun denotes a person, place, or thing. But a gerund denotes an action.


However, this is not the case we find in Choice E of this official sentence.

Choice E says: XYZ are geared toward

enhancing the performance of athletes and
preparing them for international competition

Both the entities are gerunds and hence, are parallel. There being gerunds is enough to make them parallel.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Dear mikemcgarry,
I seem to encounter a problem regarding the noun "Special Training Programs". Although i know that programs is a plural, on a deeper look, I observed that the first letter of the 3 words start with a capital. Special Training Programs. This means that "Special Training Programs" is a singular noun. So I moved on to options A and B. Please clarify. I need your help in this.

Correct Answer E.

The Sports Medicine Programs.....are - SV agreement

enhancing......and preparing - Parallelism


Thanks,
GyM

Split: is / are.
Here is the subject is "The Sports Medicine Programs" which is plural. So, we should use are.

(A) is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation - Incorrect SV agreement

(B) is geared to enhance the performance of athletes and to prepare them - Incorrect SV agreement

(C) are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation - parallelism problem

(D) are geared toward the enhancement of athletes' performance and toward preparing them - parallelism problem

(E) are geared toward enhancing the performance of athletes and preparing them -

why (C) is wrong? I think it is grammatically correct. how does (c) changes meaning?

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daagh
Since there is apostrophe in C how it is wrong ?

teaser



The programs do two things
1, enhancing the performance
2. preparing the athletes.

Both of them separate issues as signified in choice E.
However, C deviates from this perception

C says -- The Sports Medicine Programs of the Olympic Training Center, a complex where final tryouts are held for athletes representing the United States in the Olympics are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation for international competition.

1. The Sports Medicine Programs are geared (to enhance athletes' performance)
2. and The Sports Medicine Programs are geared their preparation.

Therefore, when read with the non-underlined part, the second part doesn't make sense.

You can also parse the same sentence in another way.

1. The Sports Medicine Programs are geared to enhance (athletes' performance)
2. and The Sports Medicine Programs are geared to enhance their preparation ---Here enhancing their preparation is not correct.

Answer is E

ANS-E



A,B out because of SV agreement issues.



C,D,E--------- the correct usage is gear toward/s more idiomation.



C) out.



D vs E....



D) issues with parellelism.. 'the enhancement' is an action noun.. and preparing is a simple gerund...... out.



E) correct choice.

The Sports Medicine Programs of the Olympic Training Center, a complex where final tryouts are held for athletes representing the United States in the Olympics, is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation for international competition.

(A) is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation Singular "is" incorrectly used for plural subject "The Sports Medicine Programs". Eliminate.

(B) is geared to enhance the performance of athletes and to prepare them Singular "is" incorrectly used for plural subject "The Sports Medicine Programs". Eliminate.

(C) are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation The correct idiom is "geared toward" and not "geared to". Eliminate.

(D) are geared toward the enhancement of athletes' performance and toward preparing them "enhancement" and "preparing" are not parallel. Eliminate.

(E) are geared toward enhancing the performance of athletes and preparing them Correct answer - above errors corrected and no new errors introduced.

Hope this helps.

EducationAisle isn't "The Sports Medicine Programs" is a proper noun right? so shouldn't a proper noun be treated as a singular one?

Yeah..if that were the case, I would, at the very least, have expected "The Sports Medicine Programs" to be either in quotes or italicized.

I dont think so. both "is" and " are " is good because if we consider the first phrase is a proper name, " is" can be good.
so, if we focus on meaning , we dont have to think about "is" or "are" and gmat will never test us this point. gmat test the basic points though this basic can be hard .

"geared to do" is not idiomatic. this phrase is no sense too. because the program can not enhance but it is geared to enhancing.
paralelism is needed ,so, choice e is good

mikemcgarry

Hello sir,
My question is that in “Sports Medicine Program” P is in capital letters so should not it be treated as singular?

Thanks and regards

Hoozan ramuramu1838

Has someone been telling you that proper nouns are always singular? That is in no way true. It is very common for names of bands (The Beatles), teams (The Yankees), geographical features (The Himalayas, The Great Lakes), and other proper nouns to be plural. However, it depends on the exact type of word and the situation. For instance, countries are generally singular even when their names seem plural. We'd say "The Marshall Islands is a beautiful country," but if we were talking about the islands themselves, we might use a plural: "I have visited several of the Marshall Islands." Similarly, we use a singular for titles, but that's because if we say "Star Wars is not realistic," we are talking about the movie (or movie franchise), not the actual wars or the entire set of movies (for that, we'd have to say "The Star Wars movies"). There are also well-known collective nouns that are referred to in singular. We say "The CDC is recommending that . . . " even though the name of the organization is the Centers (plural!) for Disease Control.

In the case of the sentence at hand, we are talking about a set of programs. "The Sports Medicine Programs" is not the title of a book or film, for example. Honestly, I don't see why the capitals are there. If that's really in the official question, I'd say it's a questionable choice. Even if we want to capitalize the name of the field (Sports Medicine), it doesn't make sense to capitalize "programs." So that may be feeding in to the confusion, but all the same, if we have multiple programs, we need a plural verb.