Subject-verb agreement

[aayush333]

With its plan to develop seven and a half acres of shore land, Cleveland is but one of a large number of communities on the Great Lakes that is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

(A) is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(B) is looking at its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(C) are looking to their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(D) are looking to its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting

(E) are looking at their waterfronts as a way they can improve the quality of urban life and attract


Between 'B' & 'C'??

[isodhi]

With its plan to develop seven and a half acres of shore land, Cleveland is but one of a large number of communities on the Great Lakes that is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

(B) is looking at its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(C) are looking to their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract

Original Errors:
Subject Verb Agreement
The issue I had with this problem was when I was trying to figure what the Verb "is" supposed to be in Agreement with. The Phrase "A Number of" is Plural so it takes the Verb Are.

PN Number Issue
The Pronoun cannot be its because again we are referring to communities not just Cleveland

Choice "C" makes correct use of Pronoun "their" and and Verb "are".

Hope that helps.

[aayush333]

Thanx for the explanation isodhi!

[tim]

Thanks! Let us know if you have any further questions..

[pranabiitkgp]

I don’t agree with the above explanation and with the choice aswell.
I think ''Cleveland' is the subject and therefore it should take 'is' and ''its' . So the option B) is correct.
'a number of' is inside of phrase and cannot be the subject and also if indeed this were the subject then there would have been 'those' instead of ''that'' to refer back to the plural subject .
Please correct me if this is wrong.
And also can 'that' refer back plural subject.

Thanks.
PM

[tim]

We can still have subjects and verbs inside subordinate clauses (that's why they're called subordinate clauses), so your proposed rule is an overgeneralization. In this case, we can identify the proper subject by asking ourselves what is looking to its waterfront. If Cleveland is looking to its waterfront, then the only purpose of the other communities is to confirm that Cleveland is in fact a community on the Great Lakes. This is not the intent of this sentence. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense to say that the communities are looking to their waterfronts..

[pranabiitkgp]

Thanks Tim. Understood !

[tim]

cool; glad to hear it!

[Pavisingh1]

With its plan to develop seven and a half acres of shore land, Cleveland is but one of a large number of communities on the Great Lakes that is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

(A) is looking to its waterf[color=#BF0080]ront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(B) is looking at its waterfront to improve the quality of urba[/color]n life and attract

(C) are looking to their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract

(D) are looking to its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting

(E) are looking at their waterfronts as a way they can improve the quality of urban life and attract


Between 'B' & 'C'??

[tim]

let us know if you have a question here..

[kishankhatri]

Hi Tim,

I am a little confused with the usage of "Looking to".

Cleveland is looking to improve ---makes sense
Cleveland is looking to their waterfronts to improve --- I can't make a sense of it.

As per my understanding, correct usage is "look to someone or something (for something)"

[RonPurewal]

hi,
since the original post is over a year old and no one has given the source of the problem, i'm locking this thread.

the only reason i'm not deleting the thread entirely is to point readers to this thread ...
with-a-new-park-stadium-and-entertainment-complex-t553.html
... which contains the original GMAT PREP problem on which this one is based.
with that problem in hand, there's no value left to be derived from this version.