Reading many chivalric romances inspire the novel's protagonist to

@Daagh/Generis/GMATNinja/GMATNinja Two/AjiteshArun or any other experts: Can anyone please throw some lights on the below rule.

Surveys indicate that the percentage of young Italians who are unemployed has, for over a decade, remained stubbornly high despite government taken measures meant to improve young people's job prospects. (correct sentence)

According to my understanding of SC rule, third form of verb can not be used alone without 'to be' verb. However, in the above example, taken is used without to be form of verb.

Can someone please explain why answer choice A is not correct ?

hahaha - what on earth is that question? I've seen hundreds of questions but I've read that one more than twice and could not find one suitable answer. To me, all of the answer choices are flawed.

In A, subject, reading, is singular and verb to the subject, inspire, is plural. So, verb does not agrees with subject. Hence, A is incorrect.

What made D a wrong choice and reason why C is best choice and conveyed intended meaning

All the options seem awkward to me. I had chosen D as the answer. Can someone please explain why C is correct?

This is a tricky question where a lot of options (including the correct answer) are worded a bit awkwardly. However, this is a good exercise to remember that "awkward wording" is one of the last criteria to rule out answer options, and that too only in the event of another clearly worded option with no other errors being present. Let us look at the question here:

Reading many chivalric romances inspire the novel's protagonist to reimagine himself as the knight-errant Don and seek adventure in the name of love and honor.

A) Reading many chivalric romances inspire the novel's protagonist The verb "inspire" is being applied to a singular subject "protagonist" and hence needs to be in singular form, "inspires". Eliminate.

B) The novel's protagonist inspires from reading many chivalric romances The use of "inspires" is incorrect since it implies that the protagonist acts to inspire someone else and not himself. Eliminate.

C) The protagonist of the novel's reading many chivalric romances inspires him While this too is awkwardly worded, there are no obvious errors and appears an acceptable option at this stage. We should hold on to this at this point.

D) By reading many chivalric romances inspires the novel's protagonist Beginning this sentence with "By" is redundant since the sentence goes on to state that reading inspires the protagonist. Eliminate.

E) His reading of many chivalric romances inspire the novel's protagonist Same error as (A). Eliminate.

Given that all options except (C) have obvious grammatical errors, we should go with option (C) despite its awkward wording.

Hope this helps.

Dear GMATNinja, Magoosh team, sayantanc2k, EMPOWERgmatVerbal,

Sorry to bother you. But it will be a great help if you can help with the explanation.

Regards!

A's reading many novels inspires him to ... awkward phrasing but it's not wrong I guess.

Here, A = protagonist of the novel.

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(A's) Reading many novels inspires him to ... awkward phrasing but it's not wrong I guess.

Here, A = protagonist of the novel.

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Please help me understand this

Poor quality question - I don't think any of the answers fit

In the second half of the sentence, “and seek adventure ....” , there is a plural verb “seek” which requires a parallel plural verb in the underlined part of the sentence. So according to me none of the choices make sense.

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mikemcgarry, could you please dissect this uncanny mutation of a question?

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