That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer

When I review this question with students, I find the best way to think about it is to think of the following structure as an idiom:

"It's surprising that __________"

"It can hardly be said that ________"

"It's unfortunate but true that __________"

This construction is a particular type of English idiom that's used to avoid putting a very long, complicated clause at the beginning of a sentence. Given the choice, most of us native English speakers should prefer (1) to (2) below:

(1) It's unfortunate that Jordan and Lee unexpectedly divorced after five seemingly happy years of marriage. - Good
(2) That Jordan and Lee unexpectedly divorced after five seemingly happy years of marriage is unfortunate. - Weird

You might want to cross off (1) because the 'it' doesn't seem to refer to anything. However, that's because in this particular idiom, there's a 'hollow it' that doesn't refer to anything at all, and that's okay. The 'hollow it' shows up in other English sentences too, like "It's raining" or "It's going to be beautiful outside today."

Really, what I think is being tested in options (A) and (B) is whether you recognize the 'it can hardly be said that ______' idiom, and whether you know that it's better to keep an idiom in its normal form than to move the bits around.
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A - That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said that it is their fault

That something has happened can hardly be said that it is their fault.
something = educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology

The second that is problematic.

If we change the construction to - That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said to be their fault, I don't see any grammatical lapses, the construction is inelegant and awkward. I would look for a better construction.

B - That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said to be at fault

That something has happened can hardly be said to be at fault.
something = educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology

What does it even mean? Who is at fault? An event cannot be at fault.

C - It can hardly be said that it is the fault of educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology

who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology is just a modifier modifying educators. So the sentence in essence reads - It can hardly be said that it is the fault of a certain kind of educators.

certain kind - those educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology

Now what is the fault of educators? it has no referent.

E - The fact that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said.

Something can hardly be said - Okay

Something - The fact that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology

- Changes meaning. it is not a fact that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology. In fact this very thing is debatable.

D - It can hardly be said that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology - Perfect.

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of the crucial part of this sentence is that educators cannot be said to be at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Pronouns + Awkwardness/Redundancy

• A pronoun can only have one referent in a sentence.

A: This answer alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "that it is their fault"; the construction of this phrase leads to an incoherent meaning; the intended meaning is that educators cannot be said to be at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology. Further, Option A uses the needlessly indirect construction "That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

B: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the clause "That educators have not anticipated...can hardly be said to be at fault"; the construction of this clause illogically implies that the fact that educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology cannot be said to be at fault for something unspecified; the intended meaning is that educators cannot be said to be at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology. Further, Option B uses the needlessly indirect construction "That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

C: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the clause "it is the fault of educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology"; the construction of this clause incorrectly implies that the specific educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology cannot be said to be at fault for something unspecific; the intended meaning is that educators, in general, cannot be said to be at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology. Further, Option C incorrectly uses "it" as a placeholder pronoun in two places; please remember, a pronoun can only have one referent in a sentence.

D: Correct. This answer choice uses the clause "It can hardly be said that educators are at fault", conveying the intended meaning - that educators, in general, cannot be said to be at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology. Further, Option D avoids the pronoun error seen in Option C, as it only uses "it" as a placeholder pronoun in one place. Additionally, Option D is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.

E: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the clause "The fact that educators are at fault...can hardly be said"; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology, but this fact cannot be said; the intended meaning is that educators are not at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology.

Hence, D is the best answer choice.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said that it is their fault : Alvin Toffler, one of the most prominent students of the future, did not even mention microcomputers in Future Shock, published in 1970


(A) That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said that it is their fault
(B)That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said to be at fault
(C)It can hardly be said that it is the fault of educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology
(D)It can hardly be said that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology
(E)The fact that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said.


HI all i am opening this thread again because i dint got the previous explanation quite convincing....so will request the experts also to share their thoughts.

as per my understanding i was able to eliminate A ,B but was stuck in C D E...
Please suggest.

thanks
SKM

Hi shaileshmishra

(C)It can hardly be said that it is the fault of educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology
Wrong. "who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology" modifies educators ==> C changes meaning because it says: educator who have not anticipated..... are not at fault. But the intended meaning is: educators are not at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology.

(D)It can hardly be said that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology
Correct.

(E)The fact that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said.
Wrong. The structure of E is: the fact ..........can hardly be said ==> Wrong. The fact is the fact, why it cannot be said?

Hope it helps.

Here is a blog for sentences that begin with that!

https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/substantiv ... -the-gmat/

Hi experts,

I understand that opening sentence is Dependent clause followed by ";", followed by Independent clause and we need to somehow convert dependent clause to independent clause.

Can you please explain why each of the answer choices are wrong here ? Especially what is the difference between C and D

Hi there,

Before we respond to your question, we would like to see your analysis of this question. This way, we can give you a more effective response based on your understanding of the question. Please attempt an analysis based on the three-step process.

I look forward to your response.

Thanks,
Meghna
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That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said that it is their fault: Alvin Toffler, one of the most prominent students of the future, did not even mention microcomputers in Future Shock, published in 1970.

(A) That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said that it is their fault

(B) That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said to be at fault

(C) It can hardly be said that it is the fault of educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology

(D) It can hardly be said that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology

(E) The fact that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer
technology can hardly be said

Meaning : It can hardly be said that the educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology. Alvin Toffler, one of the most prominent students of the future, did not even mention microcomputers in Future Shock, published in 1970.

POE:

Option A) The Sentence starts with "that" and kind of inverted.

It can hardly be said That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology. And also “it is their fault”. The usage is educators are at fault.

Option B) Not sure who is at fault.

Option C) “it is the fault”. What does “it” signify?
We can say
“It can hardly be said that educators are at fault.”

Option D) Looks good.

Option E) Only issue I can find is the predicate of the sentence “The fact can hardly be said” is very far away and we lose track of it.

D) Looks good as per POE.

Please share your thoughts.

Hi @freakygeek,

This one slipped my attention - very sorry about that. :-/ Thanks @bagdbmba for the reminder.

Thanks @freakygeek for providing your detailed analysis as suggested. I really like how you've paid attention to the structure of your sentence, particularly for your analysis of option A: you are right that two DCs don't make an IC, and you can use that justification to eliminate option A. Having said that, I wouldn’t use sentence structure as the primary focus when eliminating options for this question. Each of the incorrect options has a meaning issue here. Let’s see how.

Option A: Incorrect, as you’ve pointed out.

Option B: Completely distorts the intended meaning. “That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology” is the subject of the verb “can hardly be said”. Logically, this statement can’t be said to be at fault. It’s the educators who aren’t at fault.

Option C: “Educators who have not anticipated” restricts the meaning to those educators who haven’t anticipated the impact of microcomputers. However, the intended meaning is that educators in general can’t be faulted, not that a certain group of educators can’t be faulted.

Let’s see how the meaning gets restricted here. Look at these examples:

• The teacher distributed the notebooks among the students who had completed their homework.
=> Meaning: Only some students had done their homework. Only these students were given the notebooks.
• The teacher distributed the notebooks among the students, who had completed their homework.
=> Meaning: All the students referred to in the sentence had done their homework.

While these examples don't exactly correspond to the structure of this choice, I hope the meaning change is clear. "Educators, who have not..." means "all educators have not..." "Educators who have not..." means "some educators have not..."

Option D: Correct.

Option E: Again, this choice completely distorts the intended meaning. “The fact that educators are at fault” is misleading, since the point made by the sentence is that educators are NOT at fault. Moreover, ‘that fact’ is the subject of the verb ‘can hardly be said’. So, this choice says that “the fact… can hardly be said.” This meaning is illogical. If something is a fact, it’s already happened. So in other words, this choice is saying that the fact that educators are at fault has already happened, but it can hardly be said. There’s a serious meaning discrepancy here.



@bagdbmba: I agree with your analysis of the meaning of option C: this option distorts the intended meaning of the original sentence, which refers to educators in general and not to a specific group.

I hope this analysis helps!

Regards,
Meghna
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In GMAT world that primarily has two usages either a connector or act as a subject (please read the e-gmat's post on that). When that acts a connector, it will connect two clauses, each having it's own subject and verb. That as a subject will have a verb and will be modifying a noun.

Option A and B seems to have it's own subject and verb which means it's role should be of a connector but there are no clauses to connect hence incorrect.
C-Change in the meaning and wordy (changes the scope from Educators to Educators who have not anticipated)
D-Correct
E-Wordy.

Let's Kudos

Request the moderators from egmat or OptimusPrep help understand the logic for eliminating C.

nishith17

Ask the question: What can hardly be said?

The answer is the clause: it is the fault of educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology.

Now think of this clause independently.

First eliminate the modifier who have not.....technology referring to educators.

The clause becomes: it is the fault of the educators. ........ this is an incomplete clause.

The clause should have continued in the following way:
It is the fault of the educators that they did or did not XXXX.

Here the pronoun it acts as a placeholder that is used in place of the whole phrase that they did or did not XXXX.
Without the phrase that they did or did not XXXX, the pronoun it is incomplete .

This is the reason that option C is wrong... incomplete clause because of absence of an antecedent for the placeholder it.

But I thought the present perfect tense should be used here. The action 'anticipate' occurred in the past, furthermore, the sentence has one of the example which also occurred in the past.

Pls help. I always have problem understanding questions regarding tenses.

As you have anticipated, the usage of present perfect for "anticipate" would be correct. However the options (A, B and C) using present perfect have other serious grammatical issues.

In option D, using simple present for the verb "are" is correct since the educators are still at fault - the fact is a general truth.

Thank you very much. Per my understanding, we should eliminate other serious grammar mistakes first and left the tenses for last, is it right? I often see the grammar mistake to be very hard to recognize.

hi,
there is one verb ARE which is correct as we are talking of todays educator..
But I think where you are going wrong is taking anticipate as a verb..
'anticipating' here is a GERUND and "not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said. " is an OBJECT of preposition FOR..
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I think choice A and B are wrong not because of the use clauses as subjects, but because of other reasons. Uses of clauses that have their own verbs are acceptable in Grammar. See the following link for an understanding of this theme.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/f ... subjpp.htm


That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said that it is their fault: Alvin Toffler, one of the most prominent students of the future, did not even mention microcomputers in Future Shock, published in 1970.

(A) That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said that it is their fault --- That educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology--- is a subject clause and can hardly be said is the verb; So nothing wrong about that. However, what does the word ‘stand’ for? There is no precise referent for the pronoun ‘it’

(B) that educators have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said to be at fault --- Although this removes the problematic ‘it’, still we cannot say that a phenomenon of some people not anticipating is at fault.

(C) It can hardly be said that it is the fault of educators who have not anticipated the impact of microcomputer technology -- yet again the problem of a referent-less second ‘it’

(D) It can hardly be said that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology --- Good enough

(E) The fact that educators are at fault for not anticipating the impact of microcomputer technology can hardly be said -- the same problem as in B., in addition, the ending is weird.
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Context and meaning determine the tense usage. Hopefully it is clear that anticipate means predict/expect. From the sentence, it is very clear that educators were proven wrong because microcomputer technology did have a significant impact (which is something that educators did not anticipate). So, anticipation and proving wrong of that anticipation, all happened in the past. Hence, present perfect is not a valid tense.

Let’s look at an analogy that will hopefully ring bells.

Would we say:

i) Economists did not predict the great depression of 1930s (simple past)

Or would we say:

ii) Economists have not predicted the great depression of 1930s (present perfect)

It should be clear that ii) does not make any sense, since the prediction as well as the failure of that prediction (in this case great depression) all happened in the past. Hence, simple past should be used, not present perfect.
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