Since the last election, the lobbying effort initiated by environmenta

Question

Since the last election, the lobbying effort initiated by environmental organizations, homeowners, and small business owners  have increased awareness of pending environmental legislation .

(A) have increased awareness of pending environmental legislation
(B) have increased awareness about pending legislation dealing with the environment
(C) has increased awareness about pending environmental legislation
(D) has increased awareness of pending environmental legislation
(E) has increased awareness of environmental legislation that is still pending

DmitryFarber · Accepted Answer

SonGoku If we get down to a point at which the only choice left is between prepositions (about vs. of), an idiom is probably being tested. As others have pointed out above, the correct idiom here is "awareness of." You can't be "aware about" an issue.

If you don't know the idiom in a situation like this, the only other thing you can do is look for a parallel modifier that may help you out, but here there isn't one. If the sentence said "awareness of legislation" in the underlined portion, but went on to say "and of community action" or something like that in the non-underlined portion, that would be an additional clue that "of" was the correct idiom. This is fairly common. In fact, the GMAT doesn't tend to make idiom choice the only difference between two answers. (It can happen, but we see it much more commonly in questions written by students.) For instance, in the example linked below, we have a split between "with," "from," and "of," but one of those words is used in a parallel part of the sentence, leaving us with a nice clue!

https://gmatclub.com/forum/while-larger ... l#p1880271

ZuluMong · Answer

D for me.

First split - lobbying effort is singular --> "has." A B out.

Second split - awareness about vs of --> aware of sounds correct. C out.

Third split - D and E left, E sounds too wordy. D final answer.

Whats the source on this? Edit: whoops never mind saw the tag.

arzad · Answer

Ajay369 I agree with you. the answer should be C.

"Awareness of" is an incorrect idiom

soul123 · Answer

Guys i also went for C thinking that awareness about is correct idiom but OE is D.

the original sentence contains an incorrect subject-verb relationship. While it may
seem the subject of this sentence is “environmental organizations, homeowners, and
small business owners,” the actual subject is the singular “lobbying effort.” Therefore,
the plural verb “have” is incorrect.
(A) This choice is incorrect as it repeats the original sentence.
(B) The subject-verb relationship is incorrect. While it may seem the subject of this
sentence is “environmental organizations, homeowners, and small business owners,”
the actual subject is the singular “lobbying effort.” Therefore, the plural verb “have” is
incorrect. Additionally, this choice contains the incorrect idiom “awareness about”
instead of “awareness of.” The end of this sentence is unnecessarily wordy: “pending
legislation dealing with the environment.” A more concise wording is preferable.
- 9 -
Awareness of is the right idiom not awareness about.
(C) While the subject-verb relationship issue is corrected by using the verb “has” to
agree in number with the singular subject “lobbying effort,” the incorrect idiom
“awareness about” is used instead of “awareness of.”
(D) CORRECT. The verb “has” agrees in number with the singular subject “lobbying
effort” and the correct form of the idiom, “awareness of,” is used. The end of the
sentence, “pending environmental legislation,” is clear and concise.
(E) The end of this choice, “environmental legislation that is still pending,” is
unnecessarily wordy.

daagh · Answer

IMO  ‘awareness of ’ is sharper than ‘ awareness about’  and hence is more logical and preferable in the given specific context of pending legislation. Therefore C; But do GMAT topics tread on such wafer- thin nuances?

ksp · Answer

Hey guys,

Even am not sure of awareness of.

aware of is correct. So it must be i guessed.

But i did some googling ad found this explanation from mgmat forums.

https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/awa ... t6770.html

np2904 · Answer

A & B have plural verb 'have', awareness 'about?'

B legislation 'dealing with'? wrong

C Wrong idiom 'Awareness about'

D Awareness of 'pending' legislation ? . It should be awareness of legislation that is still pending.

SonGoku · Answer

Hi,  GMATNinja ,  GMATNinjaTwo ,  MikeScarn ,  generis ,  hazelnut 
 someone please clarify what is wrong with C. I was unable to decide the choice between C and D .

GMATNinja · Answer

This is purely idiomatic, and that's pretty unfortunate. As DmitryFarber said, it's rare that the GMAT makes an idiom an unavoidable, deciding factor in an SC question. And yeah: We'd say that you are aware OF something, not aware ABOUT something. Will you see that same idiom again on test day? Maybe... but I wouldn't bet on it.

So don't worry too much about it, and if you're still worried about it anyway, check out this long-winded rant about idioms . I hope this helps a bit!

lakshya14 · Answer

Can a non-living object like "pending environmental legislation" have "awareness"?

GMATNinja · Answer

The sentence doesn't tell us that "pending environmental legislation" has awareness  itself . Instead, it implies that "the lobbying effort" has increased awareness of pending environmental legislation  in the general population.

Consider this example:

"Sappy commercials about abandoned puppies have increased awareness of the local animal shelter."

Here, the shelter itself isn't aware of anything. Instead, it's implied that  people in general  are more aware of the animal shelter because of the sappy commercials. The official example has the same construction.

Is this a bit ambiguous? Absolutely. But all of the answer choices have the same ambiguity, so we can't use that as a reason to make any eliminations.

I hope that helps!

02999 · Answer

Can you please help me understand why E is incorrect ? Just because of wordy compared to D or is there any other reason?

GMATNinja · Answer

Good question. A few have already chimed in here about (E)'s wordiness, and while you'd never want to treat wordiness as a concrete error, if you're down to two options, it's not totally unreasonable to use it as a tiebreaker if there's nothing meatier to go on.

I'd add that the phrase "still pending" is redundant. Either the legislation has been enacted, in which case it's not pending, or it hasn't been enacted yet, in which case it's pending. "Still" is kind of useless here. Again, not a concrete error, but as a tiebreaker when you've got a cleaner option that removes the redundancy? Totally reasonable.

I hope that helps a bit!

Momsspaghetti · Answer

As per Google: Which should you use, aware about or aware of? The adjective aware means knowing that something exists, or having knowledge or experience of a particular thing. Aware takes the preposition of. Aware about is incorrect.

lobbying effort = has

OA : D

lobbying effort = has

OA : D

kelly_jacques · Answer

GMATNinja  or any other expert

I actually selected E because I felt that D had a meaning error. "has increased awareness of pending environmental legislation" conveys a meaning that the awareness is regarding PENDING environment legislation, i.e. there is increased awareness around the aspect of pending. Therefore, despite the redundancy of "still", I felt that E was the only one that conveyed the correct meaning. Could you please explain why this thought process is incorrect?

Deep32470 · Answer

Since the last election, the lobbying effort initiated by environmental organizations, homeowners, and small business owners have increased awareness of pending environmental legislation.

(A) have increased awareness of pending environmental legislation
(B) have increased awareness about pending legislation dealing with the environment
(C) has increased awareness about pending environmental legislation
(D) has increased awareness of pending environmental legislation
(E) has increased awareness of environmental legislation that is still pending

Subject effort is singular, hence A, B are out leaving C,D & E. Awareness is of not about leaving further D & E with us. E is wordy hence D.

GMATNinja · Answer

It sounds like you're saying that you treated "pending" like a gerund (a noun) rather than an adjective? As if "pending" is something that can be done to environmental legislation (e.g. "Five pieces of environmental legislation were pended last week")?

But "pending" doesn't work that way, and you can't "pend" something. So we can't have a situation where the environmental legislation is "being pended". That means that we can't talk about awareness of the action of "pending" the legislation.

Instead, "pending" is an adjective, telling us more about the legislation. (What kind of environmental legislation? Pending environmental legislation.)

I hope that answers your question!

kavitaverma · Answer

I selected E. I thought 'has increased awareness of environmental legislation that is still pending' is better than 'has increased awareness of pending environmental legislation', based on this OG question:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/although-som ... 94385.html

where 'a quite tense situation' is stated incorrect.

I am not able to comprehend the difference between both the questions here.

Thank you.

GMATNinja · Answer

In the other example, "a quite tense situation" isn't a major decision point -- there are more important things going on, as discussed in  this post , among others.

In this case, you could argue that "pending environmental legislation" is a bit better because it makes it clear that the legislation in question is not yet  actually  law. In (E), when you read, "has increased awareness  of environmental legislation ," you get the impression that we're talking about  existing  legislation -- stuff that's already written into law.

Then you see a "that" clause and think, "okay cool, we're about to get something that describes this existing law -- wait, it's still pending? So it ISN'T actually law yet??"

Is that a concrete error? No. Can you figure out the intended meaning in (E)? Sure... but (D) makes things clearer.

I hope that helps!

Since the last election, the lobbying effort initiated by environmenta

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Since the last election, the lobbying effort initiated by environmenta

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