Proceeding without a definite plan for upcoming labor negotiations, li

AndrewN
I'm not convinced, boss! I don't know what's going on in my brain.
Gerund (in A,B,C and E) could be subject. no issue here, but how an infinitive (purpose) could be a subject? I need an example which starts with infinitive (to+verb) that treats as subject.

Should not we use 'it' before 'takes' like the following?
To stick the landing in many gymnastics exercises, it takes a tremendous amount of skill, balance, and timing.
Am I missing anything?
Thanks for the response...

Boss? I am not sure I have been called that one before. I think this English Grammar article might be worth a read. (I guess I could have kept my example a little more basic just to illustrate my point.) I hope it helps.

- Andrew

GMATNinja, could you please explain what is wrong with option D?

I think differently
I will want to talk about past perfect.

gmat never can test past perfect on its multiple choice exam because of the use of past perfect.

past perfect is used when we want to emphasize that an action finished before another action. if we dont emphasize this point and use simple past, the second meaning happens. we dont use past perfect when the order of 2 events are clear.

he used a plastic model to make his sculpture, the plastic model which was discovered last year

we dont use "had used" in above sentence.

so, both simple past and past perfect are correct in choice B and D. choice D is wrong for other errors.

thangvietnam
Careful, you are reversing the logic here. I think we agree that we don't always need to use past perfect when the meaning is clear, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm describing what is necessary for the use of past perfect (if we use past perfect, we must have this), not something that makes past perfect necessary (if we have this, we must use past perfect). We can only use past perfect to describe an event that precedes some prior action. So while past perfect is not generally required, if we do see it, the sentence must have an additional past event for our past perfect event to preceded. D doesn't have that, so its use of past perfect is incorrect, and we can eliminate.

There are a couple things in option (D) that aren’t great.

First, we don’t need the past perfect in the clause “as the firm had agreed to last year.” The past perfect is used for an action finished BEFORE another past action (“I had gone to bed before the phone rang.”) Here, the action (the agreeing on the plan) did happen in the past but NOT before any other past action -- the rest of the sentence is a hypothetical case, so it did not actually occur in the past.

Second, “... without the presence of a definite plan...” is a bit redundant. We don’t need to specify that the plan is or isn’t present. The phrase “to proceed without a plan” already implies that the plan isn’t present, so "the presence of" is completely unnecessary.

(B) avoids both of those issues, so it's a better option.

I hope that helps!

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.


Error 1 - 'ing word' use - noun vs. adjective
When 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. As
Intended 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.


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'.


Error 2 - wrongly uses 'like' to compare actions
Error 3 - used double past 'had'


Error 3 - used double past 'had'


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. Please give me kudos if you find my commentary relevant.

I was stuck between B and D...I have not really seen a good explanation for eliminating D and I want to try addressing the issue with D ...
if u find any logical gaps..please let me know:)

So "Would have" can be used in 2 scenarios:
1. "It was half past five. Dad would have finished work." as the past tense form of will have
2. If it had been a little warmer, we would have gone for a swim. hypothetical situation

Our sentence seems to look more like the first one.
So already a past event has been discussed. Whoever is saying this sentence, he is discussing a situation of the past. "Would have + past participle" form
Now the reason why D is wrong is because just like A it says:
as the firm had agreed to last year

You are already indicating that the timing of the event by "last year"
So why do you need "had"?
The whole purpose of had is to indicate the sequence of events, which is fairly clear by the usage of Last Year.
So, this is one more factor through which you can eliminate D and can select B. B solves this issue..removes "had" and conveys the intended meaning..

I will be Happy to know your views on my explanation:)

animagreborn
You're right that "had" is a problem, but it's more than just unnecessary; it's incorrect. As we discussed above, it's only correct to use past perfect when there is another past event described that the past perfect event precedes. Since there's no such past event, we can't use past perfect, whether the meaning is clear or not.

Hi! In the correct answer choice B, "do" needs to refer to verbs, but here proceeding is a noun form (gerund), so is tokay for do to refer to gerund? I think this is the first time I have seen such usage because usually it refers to a verb form. IanStewart

I'm not really sure what you mean here, but gerunds are actions, so we can use the word "do" with them. In fact, we do that all the time, e.g.:

Running every day is something I've decided to do.
Eating sugar is a bad thing to do, according to some nutritionists.

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
It is not having the right reference therefore out

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
The usage and meaning is absolutely perfect therefore our option

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
like isn't the right usage as is therefore out

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
to be is better usage in comparison to would have therefore out

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
Similar reasoning as A

Therefore IMO B

For B, I thought it is wrong to say "as the firm agreed last year to do", but rather one needs to say 'as the firm agreed to do last year". What is the grammatical rule that shows this is not a problem?

egmat GMATNinja DmitryFarber
AjiteshArun

Few Questions:

1) One small clarification question regarding some differences between B and D: is there a slight difference in meaning between "as the firm agreed last year to do" and "as the firm had agreed to last year"? I keep thinking that there might be a bit of a meaning ambiguity for option D since it's not clear what the firm agreed to do last year.

2) Can someone clarify what really is the intended meaning of the sentence in terms of the "agreeing" part? As in, did the firm agree last year to proceed without a plan for last year's negotiations, or did the firm agree last year to proceed without a plan for this year's negotiations?

3) I know the usage in B of "agreed last year to do" is correct, but can you explain why? The typical format is "agreed to do last year" and not "agreed last year to do". Is there a difference between these two usages?

Right now what I'm thinking is that in "agreed last year to do", 'last year' is modifying 'agreed', and the meaning can be understood as last year, somebody had an agreement, and agreement is to do something. However, we don't know when the "do" part will happen - it could be that we agreed last year to do something this year, or we agreed last year to do something 5 years from now. On the other hand, in "agreed to do last year", 'last year' is modifying 'to do', and therefore there is a slight meaning change in which the meaning can be understood as someone had an agreement to do something last year. However, we don't know when the "agreement" part happened - the agreement could have been made 3 years ago or 10 years ago.

A couple things going on here:

First, in (B), it's clear what the firm agreed to do. It agreed to proceed without a definite plan. Not a great idea, but a clear and logical sentence.

It's harder to see what's going on in (D). The phrase "had agreed to" is ambiguous if it isn't followed by a noun or a verb. You can agree to do something. But you can also agree to a plan. It's not clear what the writer has in mind here. Are they agreeing to proceed without a plan? Or are they agreeing to the negotiations ?

It also isn't clear what the phrase "the presence of" is doing in (D). If you proceed without a plan, you're moving forward without having a plan. But if you proceed without the presence of a plan, does that mean you have a plan, but it just isn't at the location where negotiations are happening? Or does it mean that there is no plan at all? Not clear. At best, the phrase is unnecessary.

Either issue alone would be enough to prefer (B), which is clearer and more logical.

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja That makes a lot of sense - thank you so much! However, I'm still a bit confused regarding my Questions 2 & 3. Would you mind explaining a bit more in terms of these 2 questions?
egmat GMATNinja DmitryFarber AjiteshArun

Happy to. Just remember that you don't need to understand every detail of every answer choice. Your job is to pick the best of the bunch, and there may well be elements in the best of the bunch that you're not sure about. That's okay.


I read it as: last year the firm agreed to proceed with future labor negotiations, despite not having a plan in place.


The question you want to ask yourself is "do I know that this construction is wrong?" And it isn't. Either version is fine. In both cases "last year" is providing information about when the firm agreed to do something. There's no rule dictating where the phrase needs to go.

Generally speaking, when you have the thought, "is there a rule here?" one of two things is going on: 1) there is no rule, in which case, there's nothing to worry about. Or 2) there is a rule, but you don't know it, in which case it can't help you. So when you have that thought, you want to look for other things you feel more confident about.

I hope that helps!