Part of the proposed increase in state education spending

[jp.jprasanna]

B) enrollment, with a number of students in public schools growing steadily since the mid-1980'and, at nearly 47 million, reaching

B has two issues
1) adverbial clause "with....." incorrectly modifies " spending is"... does not make sense
2) a number of students .. growing... - Students are not growing, the number of students is.

Pathik

good explanation.

let me emphasize: 'a number of students' is incorrect; it has two possible interpretations, neither of which makes any sense:
(1) the idiomatic expression 'a number of', roughly equivalent to 'several' - meaning that several students have gotten fatter and fatter and fatter;
(2) 'a number' of students - meaning some random, arbitrary number of students.
both bad.

hi Ron - In option B - Isn't growing and reaching modifying schools rather than students.

If not could you please show us how growing & reaching are modifying students.

enrollment, with a number of students in public schools growing steadily since the mid-1980's and, at nearly 47
million, reaching

Cheers

[RonPurewal]

hi Ron - In option B - Isn't growing and reaching modifying schools rather than students.

that would be another incorrect interpretation, so there's no issue there.
the overall construction here is with + noun + VERBing.... so i'm parsing it as with + (noun + prep phrase) + VERBing...

all of the possible interpretations are nonsense, though, so in the end it's a non-issue.

[vijay19839]

Ron

I have attached your two posts in the below quote:-

I am little confused between post1 and Post 2 (latest post in this thread). I know option B is wrong for various other reasons but I need your help in understanding the VERBING Modifier rule. Here in Option B, we have

".....comma + with a number of students in public schools growing steadily since the ...."


I thought here GROWING (VERBING) modifies the preceding Noun (schools) but as per one of your later posts it is little confusing.

Thanks
Vijay

Post1:-
by the way, there are other ways to eliminate that choice; for instance, the modifier "growing steadily" mistakenly indicates that the schools themselves (rather than the number of students) are what's growing.

Post2:-
that would be another incorrect interpretation, so there's no issue there.
the overall construction here is with + noun + VERBing.... so i'm parsing it as with + (noun + prep phrase) + VERBing...

all of the possible interpretations are nonsense, though, so in the end it's a non-issue.

[/quote]

[tim]

i don't think there's a problem letting "growing" modify "number", but as Ron said, there are other ways to deal with the answer choice in question rather than trying to figure out what "growing" can and can't modify. i prefer to err on the side of caution - if you can't be 100% sure an answer choice is wrong with one rule, find another rule you can be sure of..

[PudGe]

Hi Tim/Ron,
Can you throw some light on the issues with the original sentence (choice A). I wasnt able to find one :(

Thanks in advance.

P.S: Thanks for this wonderful forum!i am a real beneficiary.

[RonPurewal]

Hi Tim/Ron,
Can you throw some light on the issues with the original sentence (choice A). I wasnt able to find one :(

"the number of students" is singular (because it represents a single number), but appears in choice (a) as the subject of two plural verbs.

[sachin.w]

B) enrollment, with a number of students in public schools growing steadily since the mid-1980'and, at nearly 47 million, reaching

B has two issues
1) adverbial clause "with....." incorrectly modifies " spending is"... does not make sense
2) a number of students .. growing... - Students are not growing, the number of students is.

Pathik

I am sorry i didn't understand this. Could you please explain
1. why "with.." is an adverbial clause
2. How is it (incorrectly) modifying "spending is.."

na

1) when prepositional phrases follow commas, they are adverbial modifiers (which modify the action or main verb of the preceding clause)
2) that's the action / main verb of the preceding clause

Ron,
I guess 'is' is the main verb and 'spending' is a part of the subject which is

'Part of the proposed increase in state education spending'

It seems as if spending is acting as a gerund here.
Kindly help.

[RonPurewal]

'Part of the proposed increase in state education spending'

It seems as if spending is acting as a gerund here.
Kindly help.

"education spending" = adjective + noun. it's basically the same thing as "educational expenses".

this whole thing is pretty common, by the way -- i.e., nouns can be turned into adjectives by being placed in front of other nouns.
for instance, "highway" is normally a noun, but in the construction "highway signs" it is an adjective.

[messi10]

Hi Ron, instructors,

I have a query on choice B, specifically the modifier:

B. enrollment, with a number of students in public schools growing steadily since the mid-1980’s and, at nearly 47 million, reaching

I know that B is wrong for many reasons and I didn't have any problems eliminating it. But when I was cross checking my reasons for crossing out answer choices, I came across this post:

B has two issues
1) adverbial clause "with....." incorrectly modifies " spending is"... does not make sense

I actually thought that this part of B was correct because its a prepositional modifier acting as an adverbial modifier and is explaining how the part of the proposed increase in educational spending is due to high enrollment.

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

I actually thought that this part of B was correct because its a prepositional modifier acting as an adverbial modifier and is explaining how the part of the proposed increase in educational spending is due to high enrollment.

Thanks

Without getting into grammatical terminology (which isn't going to help anyone), here's a basic explanation of how that construction works.
When you have "with + noun + VERBing...", that part should describe some aspect, part, or consequence of the stuff that precedes it -- but shouldn't summarize the whole thing.

e.g.
Foundation X received over $1 million in donations last year, with over $500,000 coming from a single anonymous donor.
--> this works, because the 500k is not the whole amount of the donations; it's just a part.

Here, the part after "with" IS the higher enrollment, so "with" is inappropriate. That's a direct explanation, so you want the colon.

[kiranck007]

Deleted the text.

[thanghnvn]

B) enrollment, with a number of students in public schools growing steadily since the mid-1980'and, at nearly 47 million, reaching

B has two issues
1) adverbial clause "with....." incorrectly modifies " spending is"... does not make sense
2) a number of students .. growing... - Students are not growing, the number of students is.

Pathik

good explanation.

let me emphasize: 'a number of students' is incorrect; it has two possible interpretations, neither of which makes any sense:
(1) the idiomatic expression 'a number of', roughly equivalent to 'several' - meaning that several students have gotten fatter and fatter and fatter;
(2) 'a number' of students - meaning some random, arbitrary number of students.
both bad.

let me explain why B is wrong.

according to grammar books,in the pattern following
("with+noun+doing/do-ed"), + main clause

the phrase "with...", called "absolute", is adverbial of the main clause, which show: reason, condition, or detail of the action in main clause.

the main problem with B is tense. "growing since" must be silmultaneously grammartically with the main verb. This is not logic.

is my thinking correct?

this question, I think, is hard. tense problem is tested offten on gmat.

[jlucero]

Your explanation looks very similar to that of Ron's earlier in this thread. Let us know if you have any other questions.

[abhasjha]

Dear Ron ,

Is not option C wrong because it uses since in place of because . I am talking about ... "since students in public schools have grown "

from whatever i have read - here is the distinction between since and because:

"Since Paul left university last year, he has no academic qualification."

When you start to read this sentence, it seems to mean "Ever since/from the time he left last year,..."

but it really means "Because he dropped out of university, he has no degree."


in short , since= passage of time
because = cause

Can i use this distinction (difference between because and since )to eliminate choice C?

[RonPurewal]

"Since" can also mean "because".

See problem #1 in the OG13 sentence correction chapter.