The team streamed into the locker room, donned their

Question

The team streamed into the locker room, donned their uniforms,   and, before commencing its first practice, they joined in a brief strategy session  .

A) and, before commencing its first practice, they joined in a brief strategy session
B) and its first practice was preceded by a brief strategy session
C) and a brief strategy session preceded its first practice
D) and, before commencing their first practice, they joined in a brief strategy session
E) and, before commencing their first practice, joined in a brief strategy session

I don't know the source of this question. I found it on Sahil's notes. It'd help if a SC expert could provide us with POE and an explanation. I am dubious about the OE.

MattGmat94 · Answer

First of all, identify the subject. Who is acting in this sentence? The team. Singular noun.
So it follows that every option which contains "their","them" or "they" is not the correct answer.

Answer E is the only one which maintains this kind of correlation between subject and verb.

Hope my english is enough clear.

Blackbox · Answer

Option B and C also have the singular verb "its". How about that? I was able to eliminate A, B and C but I don't understand why D is incorrect. It is actually clearer to objectify the team using 'they'.

MattGmat94 · Answer

D is incorrect because of the reason I've explained. The word "team" is a collective nuon, but it remains singular.

Your choice would be correct if the subject would have been "the teams". I know it is a subtle difference but try to understand that Singular nouns want singular pronouns (which is here omitted to avoid repetitions of words).

Hope the difference is clearer.

Blackbox · Answer

Option E -----  and, before commencing    their    first practice, joined in a brief strategy session

So "their" is singular?

Also according to your statement earlier :

Blackbox · Answer

A collective noun can be singular or plural depending upon the rest of the sentence following the noun. So clearly, option E assumes the noun "team" to be plural and unless it is a case of parallelism, I don't think that is a right answer choice.

MattGmat94 · Answer

Yes "their" is incorrect in the sentence! You're right!

I chose the answer E but the underlined part should be extended!

You're totally right in sayin that! But my explanation is correct too! The word "they" is incorrect referring to a team!

PiyushK · Answer

Blackbox follow posting guidelines.

Guidelines:
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Specific instruction:
1) If you are posting a question then subject of your post must be first sentence of question.

Blackbox · Answer

My apologies, Matt, but I still don't understand your explanation. I am open to further possible explanations from those who attempted this question. If you chose E, why did you? Calling all SC experts. Thank you.

VarunBhardwaj · Answer

Although Team should be singular* but in the non-underlined part, The stem uses "Their" , So, We need to consider it as plural. Choices B and C are out because of above. D is the best(only) choice which maintains Parallelism :- Streamed into...., Donner.... and Joined..... * As per the rule of collective nouns, When the members are acting as individuals, the collective noun is plural and requires plural verbs and pronouns. but the question stem in above case made our job easier

Blackbox · Answer

I too thought about parallelism at first glance but IMO they aren't quite parallel to each other. The (modifying??) clause  'before commencing its first practice,'  breaks the parallelism, innit? If it doesn't then yes, by all means Parallelism is the POE.

VarunBhardwaj · Answer

A,B and C are having a clear pronoun error.Between D/E , D is better .
I am still a novice so cant give any expert comment on parallelism.But i think parallel component can have modifying phrases in between them.

prasun9 · Answer

Option E can be broken up as:

The team 
-  streamed  into the locker room, 
-  donned  their uniforms, 
and 
- , before commencing their first practice,  joined  in a brief strategy session.

Now the phrase ", before commencing their first practice," is a modifier and it gives more information about the phrase that follows. This is a non-essential modifier (because it is enclosed within commas), hence can be removed or moved after the phrase it modifies. So the sentence can be rephrased as:
The team 
-  streamed  into the locker room, 
-  donned  their uniforms, 
and 
-  joined  in a brief strategy session, before commencing their first practice.

Thus Option E correctly preserves the parallelism and gets rid of all pronoun errors in other options.

nks2611 · Answer

can somebody explain, what does their refer in opt. E

lostnumber · Answer

The members of the team. Singular nouns that refer to a group of people can sometimes be used in the plural form, although its much less common. This question is tricky, but you can tell that the noun is clearly in plural by the way the non-underlined portion of the sentence is written "- streamed into the locker room, 
-  donned their uniforms .

MT1988 · Answer

The team donned its uniform or donned their uniform?
As the individual members Donne a uniform its plural and as the individual members make a hurdle its plural

app219 · Answer

I'm sorry but E sounds very weird... How a a team can join in a brief strategy session? This makes literally no sense...

RusskiyLev · Answer

Hi, even though team is a singular by itself, sometimes this kind of words is used in plural form - when it is referred more to individuals in a team rather than the team as a whole. For this reason, as it can be seen from the earlier part of the sentence "donned their uniforms", team is used in plural and because of parallelism needs to be used in plural for the next part of the sentence.

Hope it helps.

The team streamed into the locker room, donned their

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The team streamed into the locker room, donned their

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