The best way to extract the flavor from saffron threads is to soak them in liquid after pounding them

the above sentence is oa from gmatprep. i show it here to discuss .
look at choice a.

when working/ after pounding can be refer to no noun in the sentence correctly. the oa above contain no noun/agent, and "to extract", "to soak", and "after pounding" can refer to a general action , not to any noun in the sentence.

but in choice a in our problem, " global manager " appear and "when working" must refer to "manager'. but grammatically "when working" dose not refer to "manager".

I do not say that "when working" refer to "understanding", and , so, is wrong. if there is no "for the global manager" at the end of the sentence, choice a is correct possibly (except the error that "understanding of" is not parallel with "grasping issues"

one skill to realize the error of reference of to do/doing is to add SOMEONE/ FOR SOMEONE and change "doing" into "do"

we add "someone " to the oa above

The best way FOR SOMEONE to extract the flavor from saffron threads is FOR SOMEONE to soak them in liquid after SOMEONE POUND them

the above sentence is correct.

add "someone "into choice a.

when SOMEONE WORK with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping OF the pivotal business issues for the global manager.

(to make it simple, suppose we have OF after "grasping". this error is not mentioned here".

the sentence is incorrect, because we have SOMEONE and global manager.

if there is an agent/performer of action in the sentence, to do/doing must refer to him/her grammatically because logically to do/doing must refer to the agent.

A. "when working " incorrectly modifies "an understanding ".
B. 'They' cannot refer to singular 'manager'. "at least of equal importance as" is not idiomatic. "at least as important as" is the correct construction.
C. CORRECT ANSWER. Maintains parallelism. Modifier is correctly placed and structured.
D. "for global managers + to them" is redundant. "that they grasp the pivotal issues" is not parallel to "understanding of cultural norms".
E. "an understanding of" (A complex gerund) cannot be parallel to "grasping the pivotal " (A simple gerund).

Hope this helps!
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Dear EducationAisle GMATNinja egmat

The correct answer option is using a singular verb "is" for plural subject "understanding cultural norms". Why the verb is not "are"???

Posted from my mobile device

Hi Abhijit, the reason is that understanding is used as a noun (gerund) here and so, the subject is understanding (singular) and not cultural norms.

I do agree that GMAT is being slightly cheeky here; I would have preferred the following version (which no option offers!)

For global managers working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
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Hi experts!
EducationAisle, CrackVerbalGMAT, GMATNinja, egmat


Is the relative pronoun ("when") make any sense within A and B? Isn't the relative pronoun itself also a problem? "when" can only be used to modify a noun event or time

Hello samgyupsal
You are correct on "when" can be used to modify event or time.
Thus "When working with overseas clients".
Don't you think when is modifying the time here ? When global manager were working with overseas client ...

Problem is what comes after this phrase
"an understanding" is wrong here.
Who is working with overseas client ?
its global manager and this can't be conveyed through either option A or B.

Hope this helps

Hi AjiteshArun could you please explain how "is" is used for the plural "norms" in correct choice?

Even if understanding is a gerund, the combine phrase "understanding cultural norms" is a plural entity isn't it? Where am I going wrong?

Thanks

Posted from my mobile device

Hi nkshmalik1
The key to understand the subject verb agreement is identifying the "subject".
So what's the subject here ?
cultural norms ?
Well, look again.
Sentence is talking about "understanding" cultural norms and not just cultural norms.
Thus subject is "understanding cultural norms" and use of "is" perfectly fine here.

Hope this helps

Hi GMATNinja!
So you mean that if we said:

"Global managers working with overseas clients find an understanding of cultural norms and a grasping of the pivotal business issues to be equally important"

Then the sentence would have been correct?

In this case, the idiom is okay ("X and Y can be equally important"). But we still have the subtle, not-very-important parallelism issue discussed in an earlier post.

But I wouldn't worry about "fixing" incorrect answer choices -- that's something you'll never have to do on test day! As long as you understand why (C) is better than (E), you can move on.
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Hello experts,

I have a very basic doubt in Option C. What is the role of preposition phrase " for Global managers working with overseas clients" here?
What is it trying to modify here?

Let's start by removing the prepositional phrase:

"Understanding cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues." - This is a very general statement that, apparently, can be applied universally -- to anyone and everyone.

The addition of the prepositional phrase tells us who this statement applies to. The statement does not apply to just anyone. Instead, the statement only applies to global managers working with overseas clients.

Now consider a simplified version of (C):

"For global managers, understanding cultural norms is important." - Understanding {x} IS important, but not for everyone -- only for global managers. The prepositional phrase modifies the understanding's act of being important. In other words, the prepositional phrase seems to modify the entire clause here.

The good news is that the GMAT will never ask you to do this sort of analysis! The most important thing is that you understand how that prepositional phrase affects the meaning of the sentence (telling us WHO the statement applies to). Does it matter what exactly this prepositional phrase is modifying from a technical grammar perspective? Not one bit.
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When working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues for the global manager.


(A) When working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues for the global manager.

(B) When they work with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least of equal importance to the global manager as grasping the pivotal business issues.

(C) For global managers working with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
Correct

(D) For global managers working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important to them as that they grasp the pivotal business issues.

There's a comparison here between the relative importance of UNDERSTANDING of cultural norms and GRASPING the pivotal business issues. Here we have a comparison between 'understanding' and a relative clause 'that they...'

(E) Global managers working with overseas clients find an understanding of cultural norms to be equally important as grasping the pivotal business issues.
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Hi, GMATNinja VeritasKarishma I might be late to the party, but I noticed none of the posts mentioned the reason for which I eliminated E, so wanted to check if I eliminated it for the correct reasons. In C and E there is one difference in what the sentence intends, C states that 'understanding cultural norms' is as important as 'grasping pivotal business issues. Now it merely states the importance of two things but it does not state that managers find those two things to be important. While E explicitly states that managers find those two things to be equally important. Now, given the shift in meaning, I eliminated E. Please let me know if my understanding of the issue was correct, or was it a fluke?

There is no "original meaning". We need to find the sentence which is grammatically correct and has a sensible meaning.

(E) Global managers working with overseas clients find an understanding of cultural norms to be equally important as grasping the pivotal business issues.

The problem with (E) is the use of "equally important as".
A is equally important as B - Incorrect
A is as important as B - Correct
A and B are equally important - Correct

Had (E) said that they are equally important while all other options had said that A is at least as important as B, I would have picked (E) if (E) were the grammatically correct option.
There is no "original meaning". Whichever sentence makes sense and is grammatically correct is fine.
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Quick update on this question...

We've fixed the following typo in (E):

• original post: "equally important as grasping"
• corrected post: "equally important to grasping"

The phrase "equally important to" only really works if you have something like this:

"X and Y are equally important to Tim."

That should make (E) a bit easier to eliminate, in addition to the reasons discussed here. Sorry for the confusion!
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When working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues for the global manager.

(A) When working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues for the global manager.

Following are the errors with Option A -

i) Modifier Error : "an understanding" is incorrectly modified by "When working with oversees clients". It is illogical to say that "an understanding works with over sees clients"
ii) Comparison Error : "an understanding" is more of a noun while "grasping" is more of a verb. So comparing "an understanding" to "grasping" is incorrect.


(B) When they work with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least of equal importance to the global manager as grasping the pivotal business issues.

Following are the errors with Option B -

i) Modifier Error : Same as option A. "When they work with oversees clients" modifies "understanding cultural norms"
ii) Pronoun Error : Here "they" logically refers to "global manager". BUT "they" is plural and "global manager" is singular. Thus, there is pronoun-antecedent disagreement.


(C) For global managers working with overseas clients, understanding cultural norms is at least as important as grasping the pivotal business issues.

The errors in C have been resolved in the following ways -

i) Modifier Error : "For global managers working with overseas clients" correctly modifies "understanding cultural norms".
ii) Comparison Error : "Understanding" is correctly compared to "grasping". Both "understanding" and "grasping" signify an action.


(D) For global managers working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important to them as that they grasp the pivotal business issues.

Following are the errors with Option D -

i) Pronoun Error : "them" & "they" both refer to "global managers". The sentence reads -

For global managers working with overseas clients, an understanding of cultural norms is at least as important to global managers as that global managers grasp the pivotal business issues.

Does not make a lot of sense.

ii) Comparison Error : "an understanding" is illogically compared to "that they grasp"...does not make sense. Usual construction is As X as y

(E) Global managers working with overseas clients find an understanding of cultural norms to be equally important as grasping the pivotal business issues.

Following are the errors with Option E -

i) Comparison Error : Same as A. "an understanding" is more of a noun while "grasping" is more of a verb. So comparing "an understanding" to "grasping" is incorrect.
ii) Redundancy Error : "equally important as" is kind of redundant. Both "equally" and "as" are not needed.


Option C is our answer.

GMATNinja
Hi , hope you're doing well!
I have the following Question -

Isn't 'when' an adverb ? so isn't it modifying the the verb 'is as important as' in the clause ?
I understand that if 'when' was not used ,then it was a clear case of modifier issue .
But how does 'when' not make/make a difference ?