Question
The foundation works to strengthen local and regional agricultural markets and cooperating with governments, improving access for farmers for productive resources such as land and credit.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Solution
Sentence Analysis
In the given sentence, ‘cooperating’ is incorrect since it is not parallel to anything before ‘and’. Now, this part can be made parallel to either ‘works’ or ‘strengthen’, producing any of the below two meanings:
- The foundation works to cooperate with governments
- The foundation cooperates with governments
The second meaning looks more logical since one can cooperate directly; one doesn’t need to work to cooperate. However, it’s better to be open to both of these meanings.
Also, ‘improving access’ is presented as a verb-ing modifier modifying the preceding clause. However, it doesn’t make a lot of sense: ‘improving access for farmers’ doesn’t look like a natural consequence of foundation’s cooperating with the government.
The third problem is non-idiomatic ‘access for productive resources’. When we want to talk about ‘what is to be accessed’, we need to use ‘access to’. ‘access for farmers’ is correct since here we are talking about ‘who needs to access’.
Option Analysis
(A) Incorrect. For the three errors mentioned above.
(B) Correct. This option corrects all the three errors of the original sentence without introducing any new error. In this option, ‘cooperates’ is parallel to ‘works’.
(C) Incorrect. Since the purpose of cooperation is ‘improvement of access’, such information is better presented using ‘to + verb’ i.e. ‘to improve’. Although, ‘cooperate’ is not incorrect since it is parallel to ‘strengthen’, the construction in option B is more logical, as highlighted in the sentence analysis.
(D) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- In this option, ‘strengthen’, ‘cooperate’, and ‘improve’ are three parallel elements in a list. However, they are connected improperly using two ands. Also, logically, option B makes more sense in which ‘cooperate’ and ‘improve’ are not separate actions.
- ‘accessibility for productive resources’ is non-idiomatic. It has to be ‘accessibility to’.
- ‘their’ distorts the meaning. Are we trying to improve farmers’ access to their own resources? Probably, not.
(E) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- ‘access for productive resources’ is incorrect as highlighted in the sentence analysis.
- See my response to Vilbha’s comment below.
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Hi Chiranjeev,
you are doing a great job. I really like your detailed explanations.
Regarding this question, i have a query:
In the option E, for the prepositional phrases to be parallel, is to necessary to have same prepositions? I mean is it wrong to say “The foundation works to strengthen and “works” in cooperation with Govt.”
Hi Vilbha,
Thank you for your kind words. The answer to your first question is No. The prepositions need not be the same. In option E, “to strengthen” is not a prepositional phrase; it’s an infinitive “to+verb”. I’ll not say that prepositional phrases can never be parallel to infinitive phrases. Besides, as I look at it now, I see that the below construction should be very fine.
The foundation works in cooperation with governments to improve access for farmers to XYZ.
However, for ease of reading, I’ll prefer to repeat “works” after ‘and’ in option E to clarify this parallelism. Even I missed seeing this! Thank you for pointing it out!
– CJ
Hi CJ,
In options C and D, is not using plural ‘cooperate’ resulting in a subject verb issue with the singular ‘foundation’?
In C and D, ‘cooperate’ can be parallel to ‘strengthen’ and thus be a part of the infinitive ‘to cooperate’.
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