Bunuel
During his research on modern production systems, workers at a leading automobile manufacturing firm told Professor Roberts that these systems end up encouraging temporary or contract employment and reducing their quality of life.
(A) During his research on modern production systems, workers at a leading automobile manufacturing firm told Professor Roberts that these systems end up encouraging temporary or contract employment and reducing their quality of life.
(B) Modern production systems were encouraging temporary or contract employment and reducing their quality of life was told to Professor Roberts by the workers at a leading automobile manufacturing firm.
(C) Professor Roberts was told by workers at a leading automobile manufacturing firm that these systems ended up encouraging temporary or contract employment and reducing their quality of life, during his research on modern production systems.
(D) During his research on modern production systems, Professor Roberts was told by workers at a leading automobile manufacturing firm that they were meant to encourage temporary or contract employment at the same time reducing their quality of life.
(E) Professor Roberts, during his research on modern production systems, was told by workers at a leading automobile manufacturing firm that these systems ended up encouraging temporary or contract employment and reducing their quality of life.
Official Explanation:
Answer: E
(A) The sentence starts with a modifying phrase so whoever is doing the research needs to come after the comma, that is,
Professor Roberts. Since the sentence is in the simple past tense, the correct verb should be
ended and not
end.
(B) The use of past continuous tense (
were encouraging) is not required. The construction of the sentence is passive and very awkward.
(C) In the phrase
these systems, these doesn’t make any sense because these systems haven’t been mentioned earlier. The placement of the modifying phrase at the end of the sentence is incorrect
(D) The use of
they in the clause
they were meant to encourage is ambiguous—we don’t know whether
they refers to the
workers or to
modern production systems.
(E) The correct answer.