Prep Questions - Trans World Entertainment Corporation

[zhuyujun]

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

Can any expain why OA is C? Should we use "announce that" here?

Also, what's wrong with D? is "announce to be closing" correct or not? how about "on account of poor sales"?

Thanks!

[zhuyujun]

Can anyone help on this?

Thanks!

[cfaking]

C is better than D


announced that is always correct..

after <to be closing> there is a modifier error also

"on account of poor sales" is modifying what?Wrong Usage

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

Can any expain why OA is C? Should we use "announce that" here?

Also, what's wrong with D? is "announce to be closing" correct or not? how about "on account of poor sales"?

Thanks!

[zhuyujun]

But in C it is only 'announced', not 'announced that', that's why I think C is out.

[cfaking]

Gprep collects its Qs from the likes of NYT, The Economist
related source:http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/08/business/company-briefs-029980.html
year-1996
TRANS WORLD ENTERTAINMENT CORP., Albany, which owns the Record Town and Saturday Matinee retail chains, announced that it was closing up to one-fourth of its stores because of poor sales. The company closed 180 stores last year.


someone at BTG says

announced can be used without that.
Read this http://www.thefreedictionary.com/announce:
EX: snowdrops announced the arrival of spring

Hope that helps!!

[tomslawsky]

why wouldn't it announce that it "WILL BE CLOSING"......

[vrajesh.dave]

Instructor can you please shed some light on this question..

-- It is my understanding

A. Tense error
announced [past tense] ..are poor [present] they will be closed[future]

B. it is closing [implies that the process is on going -- present continuous ]

C. it was closing [past tense] -- agrees with announced

D. to be closing -- not sure what this one is, but it does not sound right

E. awkward sentence construction.

Again, the OA is C.

But I am not sure in the reasoning aspect of each choice

[RonPurewal]

is this problem really from GMATPrep?
it doesn't look like an official problem. you would want "that" here, as noted above. also, "it would be closing" would be better than "it was closing", since this was a future event at the time of the announcement.

does anyone have a screen shot to prove that this problem is, indeed, official?

--

EX: snowdrops announced the arrival of spring

this is irrelevant to the question above, since "the arrival of spring" is a noun phrase, not a clause.
the normal usage is
X announced that CLAUSE
X announced NOUN/NOUN PHRASE

[mohitkant]

Oh this is an official problem indeed, I chose A, i have a screen shot but i can't figure out how to upload it here.

OA is C

[StaceyKoprince]

Is the problem correctly transcribed? For instance, is the word "that" actually part of the underline?

Can you please check every single word in the transcription, including the placement of the underline?

Thanks!

[reply2spg]

I have a screen shot of the problem from GMATPREP. Please let me know how to attach the same.

I have the same doubt why OA is C.

[hi4apoorva]

Bumping this up..this is a GMAT prep question..I selected "A".

I learnt that "Anounce" is what we call command word and should be used with that.

If somebody will tell me how I can put up a screen shot.

[RonPurewal]

hmm. ugly.

the two complaints that I posted above still stand, but, as we state here quite often, we simply have to accept the fact that this problem is officially correct. ugh.

in any case, although all of the answer choices are at least somewhat ugly, choice (c) is still the best of them -- and, apparently, gmac doesn't require that you use the word "that" between "announce" and a clause.

to the posters on this thread -- it seems as though most of the complaints are about choice (c), but no one seems to have posted a choice that he/she thinks is better. did any of you think that one of the other choices was better?

--

by the way:

Bumping this up...

this is not something you want to do. we answer these threads in strict order of time, from oldest to newest, so by "bumping" a thread you are actually moving it to last place in the queue.

[prepgmat09]

Hi Ron/Stacey,

Isn't there also a meaning issue with C?

The original sentence tries to convey a meaning that "one-fourth of the stores have demonstrated poor sales and those stores would be closed".

Choice C tends to state that "one-fourth of the stores would be closed because the company demontrated poor sales".

In choice C, there is no mention that only those stores that demonstrated poor sales would be closed.

Thanks.

[mschwrtz]

1) Don't sweat meaning till you've sorted out grammar. You'll probably never get to meaning in this question.

2) The only meaning requirement is that you preserve the original meaning of the sentence, where that meaning is coherent. In this case, the original is unambiguous, while the OA is ambiguous between "will close stores because those stores have poor sales," and "will close stores because the chain/company/industry/? has poor sales." That's a real loss, to be sure, but C doesn't contradict the original meaning.