Bunuel wrote:
Proceeding without a definite plan for upcoming labor negotiations, like the firm had agreed to last year, it would surely have proven to be a disaster in the face of the skilled and resolute opposition involved this time.
First of all, you need to know that 'like' is used to compare nouns and 'as' is used to compare actions/ verbs. Now let's read the question stem and each choices below.Quote:
A. Proceeding without a definite plan for upcoming labor negotiations, like the firm had agreed to last year, it would surely have proven to be a disaster
Error 1 - 'ing word' use - noun vs. adjectiveWhen a sentence begins with 'ing word', there are 2 possibilities - either it is i) gerund (i.e. noun) or it is ii) participle (i.e. adjective). Thus, above
'Proceeding without a definite plan for upcoming labor negotiations' can be analysed either as gerund or as participle.
Logically, if it is a noun, above structure is like
'noun,like ...,pronoun "it" ' --> it does not make any sense
We need to remove pronoun 'it' in case we want to use phrase as a gerund.
Otherwise, we need phrase which is an adjective. If we assume 'ing phrase' is an adjective, structure become:
adjecive, pronoun it would surely have proven to be a disaster.... --> here we have a meaniing issue. is 'it' a disaster? or is it the act of proceeding without a definite plan a disaster? Later is correct. Thus, we are definitely sure that 'ing phrase' is not intended as an adjective.
Thus, to make a correct sentence, we need 'ing phrase' without 'it'
Error 2 - Like vs. AsIntended Comparison is between actions - i) current action to proceed without a plan and ii) as agreed last year.
Existing comparison compares i) current action to proceed without a plan and ii) firm --> illogical
Error 3 - 'had'we use a past participle to denote 2nd past. Thus, we need 1st past to denote the 2nd past. In a given sentence, the use of 'had' is not required.
Quote:
B. Proceeding without a definite plan for upcoming labor negotiations, as the firm agreed last year to do, would surely have proven to be a disaster
Error in option A is corrected here.
Correcting Error 1 - 'it' is correctly removed. Now 'ing word' works as a noun!
Correcting Error 2 - actions are compared with 'as'
Correcting Error 3 - removed double past 'had'.Quote:
C. Going ahead without the presence of a definite plan for upcoming labor negotiations, like the firm had agreed last year to do, would surely have proven disastrous
Error 2 - wrongly uses 'like' to compare actionsError 3 - used double past 'had'Quote:
D. To proceed without the presence of a definite plan for upcoming labor negotiations, as the firm had agreed to last year, would surely have proven disastrous
Error 3 - used double past 'had'Quote:
E. Going ahead without their having a definite plan for upcoming labor negotiations, as they agreed to last year, it would surely have proven to be a disaster for the firm
a lot of errors! 'their' refers to what? 'it' refers to what? --> I am not wasting time evaluating this option, simply eliminating it after a quick 1st read.
Hope my explanation helps.
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