Prep Questions - Trans World Entertainment Corporation

[tim]

Read it again. September 2010.

[maria.segal.1]

Hi, in September 2010 it only says that "announced to be closing is wrong" why is it wrong?

Please explain.

Maria

[FanPurewal]

This question can be solved by elimination.

A: "they" does not have a clear antecedent. The subject is the main modifying clause is "sales" and not stores.

B: "which" is not the ideal relative pronoun as "that" would be preferred. Also the tense "closing" is incorrect.

C: Sounds decent.

D: wordy, weird, tense, everything

E: the announcement was about closing down not having poor sales.

Two things:

B) "that" would be incorrect. We are not closing 1/4 of the stores that accounted for bad sales. We are closing 1/4 of all stores; the reason is that we have had bad sales.

C) sounds decent is not the same as having no grammatical errors. Lots of answer choices sound decent but are wrong.

hi dear lucero
i think the usage of *that* in the red above is contradicted against what the another instructor posted.
here is the link:http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/prep-questions-trans-world-entertainment-corporation-t7262-15.html?sid=d930d9009bbe22a942fd44c379dcaeb5
(the second post posted by instructor mschwrtz)

maybe i have a wrong interpret.

can you please explain?

thank you in advance

Chiang.

[eggpain24]

You're welcome.

About 10% of your success in SC will come from knowing how things work. The other 90% will come from not making things more complicated than they actually are.

this one is really awesome！got the same feeling！

best explanations ever seen in all forums！

[ZHUOC614]

HELLO RON,
you mentioned the following in one of your previous posts:

basically, there are 2 possibilities:

1/
the sentence is written from the present point of view:
the company has announced (or, just announced) ... that it has closed (or will close) the stores ... that have accounted for the poor sales figures

2/
the sentence is written from the point of view of the (past) announcement:
the company announced (some time ago) ... that it was closing (or would be closing) the stores ... that accounted for the poor sales figures

I think they really helped me a lot to learn about tense!

But to understand it more deeply, I would like to ask you several questions:

1/ why we can not use had accounted in the second version of the sentence, since the first used have accounted for the same part of the sentence?

2/ According to these two pairs, can I draw the conclusion that present perfect can be followed by a clause that is seen from the present point of view only, but past tense can be followed both by a clause that is seen from either from the present or from some time in the past.

I don't know whether I have expressed my view clearly. My main point is that whether the tense of the main clause will impact the tense of subordinate clauses, esp. when we are talking about words like "announce", "said", and "indicated", etc. If so, in what kind of way?

Thanks you a lot!

[RonPurewal]

Tenses are determined entirely by context. Grammar has zero influence on tenses.

One could also write "had accounted" in sentence #2, if, in fact, those stores had accounted for poor sales figures for some time leading up to the announcement.
There's a correlation:

• If the announcement itself stated "We're closing stores x, y, and z, because they account for the current bad sales figures", then, in the past tense, this becomes "accounted".

• If the announcement stated "We're closing stores x, y, and z, because they have accounted for recent bad sales figures", then, in the past tense, this becomes "had accounted".

[ZHUOC614]

Thank you so much!

one more question:
You said this version is correct:
the company has announced (or, just announced) ... that it is closing(or will close) the stores ... that have accounted for the poor sales figures

But I am wondering why we can use "announced " with is closing(or will close) and have accounted ? The "announced" seems to indicate a perspective from the past, but the latter two tenses indicate a timeframe of present. How can they make sense together?

Sorry for bother you so much!
Thanks a million!

[RonPurewal]

It's quite possible for a recent (past) announcement to concern something that's still going on, or something that still hasn't happened yet.

Yesterday, Rhonda told me that she is / she will be getting married soon.

[PunyataA53]

Pls explain why is choice A incorrect

Trans World Entertainment Corporation, which owns the RecordTown and Saturday Matinee retail chains, announced that since sales of up to one-fourth of its stores are poor, they will be closed
A. that since sales of up to one-fourth of its stores are poor, they will be closed
B. it is closing up to one-fourth of its stores, which accounted for its poor sales
C. it was closing up to one fourth of its stores because of poor sales
D. to be closing, on account of poor sales, up to one-fourth of its stores
E. having poor sales, such that up to one-fourth of its stores will be closed

[RonPurewal]

choice (a) doesn't really make sense.

the figure "up to 1/4" implies a degree of uncertainty (could be 1/4 of the stores, but could be fewer).

the sales figures have no uncertainty: for each store, either (i) sales are poor or (ii) they aren't. so, there is some (exact) fraction of stores that have poor sales. "up to..." is inappropriate.

the only thing that can logically be uncertain here is how many stores will be closed (since it's possible that final decisions haven't been made yet). so, for the sentence to make sense, "up to 1/4..." must be the answer to "how many stores will be closed?" (and not the answer to "how many stores have bad sales numbers?").

[gbyhats]

Hi Ron,

I see conflicting ideas in your explanations
So, can I say" ...announced it is doing"?

basically, there are 2 possibilities:

1/
the sentence is written from the present point of view:
the company has announced (or, just announced) ... that it is closing (or will close) the stores ... that have accounted for the poor sales figures

and

the sentence describes an announcement made in the past -- about something that was going on at that time in the past -- so a present construction wouldn't make sense here.

or do I have a misunderstanding in here?

Thank you very much!!!

[RonPurewal]

i edited that post slightly.

"is ___ing" would only make sense for something in progress at the time of the announcement.
e.g., Gabriel told me yesterday that he is working toward a master's degree. (= he's working on it right now)

the closing of a store isn't an event with a measurable duration--it just happens, at some specific point in time. thus, in this context "is closing" won't work, because that's not reasonably something that can be in progress.

[gbyhats]

Gotcha!!!

Thank you very much Ron!!!

[RonPurewal]

you're welcome.

[JianchengD868]

It's quite possible for a recent (past) announcement to concern something that's still going on, or something that still hasn't happened yet.

Yesterday, Rhonda told me that she is / she will be getting married soon.

Dear Ron,

This post means that the verb tense in choice A is right.
I always think of verbs such as announce as report verbs, and we need to switch verb tense in that-clause after announce to match the tense of announce . For example, we need to use "were poor" and "would be closed".

However, you have taught us we should get the verb tense from meaning not from grammar. I am exciting what I have learned from this post.

Thank you so much.

Regards,
JianchengD868