The U.S. Forest Service, then five years old, decided to put out every

Between D and E, I chose D.
1. We need adverbial phrase "more quickly"
2.In D, "formulated" and "they had been in the past" show the sequence of past events.

I agree with D and took a different route.

If you look at all choices, had been is common. So the past perfect progressive tense is common in all choices. So we clearly need a simple past.

Hence A & D remain and all else out.

Between A & D, I chose D.

Botirvoy,

Can you please explain the need for adverbial phrase?

D , because Adverbial Phrase "more quickly than" is preferred over "Quicker"(I posted one similar Q yesterday)

can someone please explain why adverbial phrase "more quickly" is preferred over "quicker"

If you want to modify the verb "extinguished", you ll need an adverb/adverbial. Hence we need "quickly" - "quicker" is an adjective.

quick modifies verb (extinguished) thus we need adverbial modifier -> "quickly" ELIMINATE ABC
between D and E chose D because has formulated means it is still formulating but then uses verb CALLED in the past so formulation action should be finished....

D my choice !

Answer: D

Parallelism - "decided to put out..." and "formulated what it called..."
Adverbs - "extinguished more quickly" vs "extinguished quicker"
You say 'fires are extinguished quickly' instead of 'fires are extinguished quick'. As such, when you are trying to imply an increased efficiency, you say 'fires are extinguished more quickly' instead of 'fires are extinguished quicker'.

MGMAT in this case is being outquoted IMO. MGMAT says ‘in the last ten days” meaning that the action started some ten days ago in the past and is still continuing. That is the significance of the word last. You certainly require a present perfect to tense it. However, the topic under question does not say that the FD formulated in the last three decades. And also note that the Department called it the 10. A.M policy in simple past tense. Therefore, the drafting is still not continuing and ended within three decades well before now; therefore, this is an action that started and ended in the past just as it was named in the past using simple past. You require a corresponding simple past to describe the formulation also, and hence D using formulated is the appropriate choice.

Just for the sake of getting the concepts clear, what is the subject of the verb 'directing' in this case ? the 'agency' or the 'policy'? Please let me know.

Directing is not a verb in this case. So there is no subject for that. It is a present participle. You see, a policy is just statement while it is the men behind the policy who are the directors. So Agency fits in better

I took following approach to arrive at the right option.

With this we are left with option A and D.
I selected D because it sounded OK to me, but now with the explanations from experts I can definitely say that we need an adverb to modify verb "extinguished". Hence 'more quickly' is definitely correct option.

The U.S. Forest Service, then five years old, decided to put out every fire in its domain, and within three decades the agency formulated what it called the 10 A.M. policy, directing that fires be extinguished quicker than they had been in the past.

A. within three decades the agency formulated what it called the 10 A.M. policy, directing that fires be extinguished quicker than they had been in the past. Incorrect. "more quickly" is correct. It is parallel - Formulated Vs Decided.

B. within three decades the agency has formulated what it called the 10 A.M. policy, directing that fires be extinguished quicker than they had been in the past. Incorrect. "more quickly" is correct. It is not parallel - has Formulated Vs Decided.

C. within three decades the agency had formulated what it called the 10 A.M. policy, directing that fires be extinguished quicker than they had been in the past. Incorrect. "more quickly" is correct. It is not parallel - had Formulated Vs Decided.

D. within three decades the agency formulated what it called the 10 A.M. policy, directing that fires be extinguished more quickly than they had been in the past. Correct. "more quickly" is correct. It is parallel - Formulated Vs Decided. Past perfect tense has two actions - one implemented and formulated while "be extinguished....had been in the past"

E. within three decades the agency has formulated what it called the 10 A.M. policy, directing that fires be extinguished more quickly than they had been in the past. Incorrect. "more quickly" is correct. It is not parallel - has Formulated Vs Decided.

Between D and E.

I need a logical explanation.

For the verb "to formulate", present perfect or simple past, both can be correct depending on the time frame of perspective. If the current time is towards the end of the three decades, then present perfrect is correct. If the 3 decades completed in the past, then simple past is correct. However looking at the the other verb "called", it appears that the 3 decades completed in the past, and hence option D could be considered better than E.

Please elucidate as to why option A is wrong?

Kindly use simple english, instead of adjective /adverb to explain the concept.

Regards

gmatexam439 Knowing the difference between adjectives and adverbs is essential to this question, and to the mastery of English grammar in general. "Quicker" means "more quick." That makes it an adjective, which describes a noun. "Quickly" is an adverb, which describes an action (or pretty much anything other than a noun). Since we are describing how fires are extinguished, we need to use an adverb ("more quickly") rather than an adjective ("quicker").

If we were describing the people who extinguish fires, we'd use "quicker": The firefighters in this town are quicker than those in Minneapolis.

I came down to D and E. But made a silly mistake to choose E . I should have seen that they are talking about the past - not ongoing.