Prep Questions - Trans World Entertainment Corporation

[RonPurewal]

there is nothing special about "reporting" verbs; you should determine tense relationships by thinking about timeframes, just as you always should.

"reporting verbs" are significant ONLY for native speakers of languages in which those verbs are treated differently (e.g., Russian), because those people will have to un-learn a few very specific (and very strongly entrenched) usages.
(if you don't immediately and deeply know what i'm talking about here, then you are not one of these people, and "reporting verbs" are thus a non-issue for you.)

[JianchengD868]

there is nothing special about "reporting" verbs; you should determine tense relationships by thinking about timeframes, just as you always should.

"reporting verbs" are significant ONLY for native speakers of languages in which those verbs are treated differently (e.g., Russian), because those people will have to un-learn a few very specific (and very strongly entrenched) usages.
(if you don't immediately and deeply know what i'm talking about here, then you are not one of these people, and "reporting verbs" are thus a non-issue for you.)

Hi Ron,
Thank you. I don't need to learn much more about "reporting verbs".

Kind regards,
JianchengD868

[RonPurewal]

you're welcome..

[AndyH539]

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.

Hi Ron,
Always appreciate your posts. you mentions that "Gabriel told me yesterday that he is working toward a master's degree. " is sill correct if the activity is still on-going. Are there any similar examples from official questions such as OG?

Thanks!
Regards
Andy

[AndyH539]

Dear Ron,
After reading all the threads, I am not 100% clear why B) is not correct answer.
B) is incorrect because of ",which" as in ", which accounted for its poor sales" ? Then what would be the correct way to fix this?

Thanks in advance
Regards
Andy

[RonPurewal]

another, perhaps bigger, problem with B is that it conveys the wrong meaning.

consider:
Jim and Tom alone accounted for two-thirds of the firm's meager sales for the year.
think about what this sentence means:
• overall sales were bad;
• nonetheless, jim and tom had significant sales numbers—so significant, in fact, that they accounted for 2/3 of all the firm's sales.

in other words, even if 'sales' is preceded by an adjective like 'meager' or 'poor', the fundamental meaning of 'accounted for ... sales' is unchanged.

in this sentence, the idea is that the chain's sales were poor overall because this fraction of stores did NOT 'account for' enough sales. B is not the right way to deliver that message.

[RonPurewal]

Then what would be the correct way to fix this?

NEVER think about how to 'fix' sentences.
never ever ever.
don't even think about thinking about this.

on this exam, your job is to eliminate 4 choices and pick 1 choice.

if you are thinking about how to 'fix' sentences, then you are trying to play the role of a professional editor, which is MUCH more demanding, all-encompassing, and difficult than GMAT SC.
don't do it.

[JayanthC936]

All,

A. that since sales of up to one-fourth of its stores are poor, they will be closed

*they will be closed* the pronoun "they"don't have clear antecedent to refer to noun stores as subject stores is in prepositional phrase.

B. it is closing up to one-fourth of its stores, which accounted for its poor sales

*it is closing* tense error

C. it was closing up to one fourth of its stores because of poor sales
Correct meaning.

D. to be closing, on account of poor sales, up to one-fourth of its stores
*announced to be closing* awkward construction.

E. having poor sales, such that up to one-fourth of its stores will be closed

correct sentence - "announced that having poor sales"

Ron,

Please correct me if am wrong.

[RonPurewal]

please read the entire thread. thank you.

[aflaamM589]

Ugly answer choices but beautiful insights by the instructors.

I am ,however, unable to get errors mentioned by mschwrtz in D and E ( non native language barriers i suppose

some more explanation by worthy instructors will be highly appreciated.


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By mschwrtz on sept 23 2010
D. announced to be closing is wrong?

Yes, and I'm not crazy about on account of, unless it's followed by rain.


E. "announced......sales" as opposed to "announced.....closing" which was the intended meaning

No. E is a train wreck. It doesn't say announced...sales. It says announced having.... where having is presumably a gerund. It's got lots of other problems too.

[RonPurewal]

if you have even a general sense of how to use 'announce', 'say', 'declare', or other such words, then you should be able to figure out that D is not a thing.
it's not an easy thing to explain, because it's just ... not a thing at all. you can't "say to be doing" something.

[RonPurewal]

If you don't have that intuition (or for some reason can't call upon it when the problem is in front of you), you can instead call up examples of similar-looking constructions that DO work.
e.g.,
The coach asked to be informed when the players were released from the hospital.
The taxicab was in such poor condition that it needed to be repared before it could be put back into service.
you'll see a pattern to the usage in these sentences. (the pattern may be hard to articulate, but that isn't what matters—what matters is that you see it.) you'll also see that this pattern is not, even remotely, reproduced in the context of this problem.

[RonPurewal]

the most glaring problem with choice E is that its meaning is wrong... very wrong.

in context, it's clear what the sentence SHOULD mean:
• sales at 1/4 of the chain's stores were bad.
• as a consequence, those stores will be closed.
• this is the substance of the announcement.

it should be equally clear that the sentence does NOT mean "the entire company's sales figures were bad, so, as a result, the company is closing 1/4 of its stores at random".

this LACK of ambiguity is evident from the form of the correct answer (which could technically convey either of these meanings, if common sense didn't point so strongly to just one of them).

...and so there's the issue with choice E: it has the WRONG one of these meanings.
choice E says that the company "announced having poor sales". this would mean that the company as a whole had poor sales—exactly what the sentence ISN'T supposed to say.

[NicoleT643]

Hi Ron, I went over all the posts of this question, however I am still a bit confused by the answer A

1, they--pronoun ambiguity is not always incorrect, so I don't think I can eliminate A because of the pronoun 'they'
2, meaning, you have mentioned in the previous post that, "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?").", however, when I read the answer A, I thought it conveyed a clear information:
i) sales of up to one-fourth of its stores are poor --> sales of a number of stores are poor, one-fourth can be interpreted as any number
ii) as a result of the sales are poor, those stores will be closed
I still think that answer A does convey the intention.

Now compare answer A to C
• A that since sales of up to one-fourth of its stores are poor, they will be closed  
• C it was closing up to one fourth of its stores because of poor sales  
A: sales of up to one-fourth of its stores are poor,
C: the company was closing up to one fourth of its stores,
the difference is the placement of one fourth modifies different nouns. However, I really can't tell any further differences, please help me to understand why A is inferior than C.

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

as mentioned in earlier posts:

• "sales OF xxxx" implies that "xxxx" is the thing being sold.
...so, "sales OF up to 1/4 of the stores" means that STORES are being sold. this is nonsense (no one is selling stores here).

• the combination of the past tense ("announced") and the future tense ("WILL be closed") is ... weird, and would only make sense in a VERY specialized situation (= basically, the situation in which an announcement had just been made, about a closure that has yet to start happening—for instance, the way this sort of thing would be announced on the evening news on the day of the announcement).
if you are interpreting a SC sentence in a way that requires a VERY "special", "weird", or "ultra-specific" timeframe... that interpretation isn't going to be the right one. the CORRECT interpretations are going to make sense in much broader terms/contexts.