Sejal16 wrote:
Can someone please explain OA ? According to me, answer should be D.
Hello,
Sejal16. The split at the head of the underlined portion makes this an easier proposition. I will highlight the parts of interest below and discuss them.
aaronlcr93 wrote:
The publicist denied the journalist's request to interview A&B Company's CEO for a front-page article in a major daily newspaper rather than speaking with the company's senior vice president.
A) to interview A&B Company's CEO for a front-page article in a major daily newspaper rather than speaking with
Analysis: A request
to perform some action was denied, so the idiom is correct. However, we then get this non-parallel construct in the comparison:
to interview... rather than speaking. It would be preferable to maintain the infinitive in the second instance.
aaronlcr93 wrote:
B) to interview A&B Company's CEO for a front-page article in a major daily newspaper rather than speak with
Analysis: This option takes care of the earlier concern in having mismatched verbs, and the meaning is clear: The publicist denied a request for the journalist to interview a CEO to produce an article for the front page of a newspaper.
aaronlcr93 wrote:
C) of interviewing A&B Company's CEO for a major daily newspaper's front-page article instead of to speak with
Analysis: The idiom is off here. In Standard American English, you cannot deny a request
of something. The infinitive works instead. Moreover, there is a problem with the comparison again, namely with
of interviewing... instead of to speak.
aaronlcr93 wrote:
D) of interviewing the CEO of A&B Company for the major daily newspaper's front-page article instead of speaking with
Analysis: The idiom has not been fixed here, even if the parallelism issue has been resolved. It is not good enough to get part of a Sentence Correction right. Everything has to work together in terms of clarity of meaning and grammatical construct to be correct.
aaronlcr93 wrote:
E) that she interview A&B Company's CEO on the front page of a major daily newspaper rather than to speak to
Analysis: There is a lot going on in this one that is glaringly incorrect. I did not eliminate the answer based on the head,
that she interview, although I did see it as a substandard way of expressing the same notion as
to interview. The meaning is distorted in the next part of the sentence, though, as the preposition
on makes it seem as though the interview could
take place on the front page of a newspaper, rather than
the words of the interview being printed on the front page of the newspaper. Apart from this problem, we also have an appendage in the extra
to at the end of the sentence. Look at the comparison a little closer:
that she interview... rather than to speak to. Without the
to before the second verb, the parallelism would be intact, but the sentence did not start,
that she to interview.
In all, the only answer that works here, for reasons outlined above, is (B). I hope that helps. If you have further questions, please let me know. Good luck with your studies.
- Andrew
01 Feb 2020, 22:22
45%
(medium)
59%
(01:29)
correct 
close
