SC - Retirement Plans CAT 1

[ningli_21]

Citing increasing worker mobility between companies, poor financial planning by workers, and finding that the plans themselves are excessively complex, the authors of a recent study have found that most eligible American workers had not made the maximum allowed contribution to their employer-offered retirement plans.


Citing increasing worker mobility between companies, poor financial planning by workers, and finding that the plans themselves are excessively complex, the authors of a recent study have found that most eligible American workers had not made the maximum allowed contribution to their employer-offered retirement plans.

Increasing worker mobility between companies, poor financial planning on the part of workers, and excess complexity in the plans themselves have been explained by a recent study finding the majority of eligible American workers who do not make the maximum allowed contribution to their employer-offered retirement plans.

Citing increasing worker mobility between companies, poor worker financial planning, and excessively complex plans themselves as possible explanations, a majority of American workers had failed to make the maximum allowed contribution to their employer-offered retirement plans, a recent study has found.

The authors of a recent study, citing increasing worker mobility between companies, poor financial planning by workers, and finding that the plans themselves are excessively complex, have found that most eligible American workers do not make the maximum allowed contribution to their employer-offered retirement plans.

A recent study has found that most eligible American workers fail to make the maximum allowed contribution to their employer-offered retirement plans; among the explanations cited are increasing worker mobility between companies, poor financial planning on the workers' part, and excess complexity in the plans themselves.


The OA is E.

My question is regarding the semicolon usage in E. Can the second half of the paragraph 'among the explanations cited are increasing worker mobility between companies, poor financial planning on the workers' part, and excess complexity in the plans themselves' be treated as a independent sentence? starting with 'among the..' just doesn't sounds right.

Please advise.

Thanks

[jnelson0612]

Good question! Yes, it can, because the semicolon is only used when two sentences are very closely linked in content. It's okay if we actually have the knowledge from the first sentence in the forefront of our minds when we look at the second sentence. In fact, such knowledge is often necessary to make complete sense of the meaning of the second sentence. As long as the second sentence contains a clause (a noun and a verb in a tense) and is closely related to the first sentence, a semicolon is acceptable.

[ningli_21]

Thanks Jamie!

[jnelson0612]

You are very welcome! :-)

[jadonhes]

Poor financial planning of the workers might lead to poor security future. The workers should be given the right justice to invest in their choice of retirement plan after all they are the one who will benefit on it in the near future and not the company. The company on the other hand should follow the necessary rules and conduct for this insurance/retirement plan issue. The Labor code perhaps has clearly stated the necessary action for this matter. [spam deleted] might be something you need when your company fails to take the very best to give you a justified retirement plan.

[tim]

keep your spam off our boards!

[malhotra.shivam]

Hi
I was able to solve the above question but it took me more than 3 mins, I had to read all the sentence to find the correct parallelism. Is there any attack strategy for such reading intensive question where it is difficult to find splits.
Thanks
Shivam

[tim]

This often comes with practice, but you have to be practicing correctly in order to get any benefit. When a problem takes you too long, ask yourself why it took so long so you can work on that. You imply you had a difficult time finding the splits. If that is indeed the case, something is going horribly wrong. Finding a split is literally an exercise in looking at the words on the page and finding words in one answer choice that are not the same words as those in another answer choice. The next step of course is to take those splits and figure out what topic they represent and what rules apply. Then you apply the rules for that topic. Note that each of these steps is fairly small on its own; a lot of students get overwhelmed with the totality of the process, but if you break it down into smaller parts usually it's not so bad. If you are encountering difficulty with specific steps of this process, let us know so we can help you further.

[rohit.manglik]

Hi Instructors,

Why is E ignoring the authors and just mentioning the study alone? Is it legitimate to say that inanimate object "study" found something. I thought usage of "Authors" is mandatory over here.

Kindly help

[Chelsey Cooley]

It does seem illogical if you think about it too hard, but we actually talk about inanimate objects in this way quite often. As long as it makes logical sense, it's totally okay!

Here's another example:

The book describes the fall of the Roman Empire.

It isn't technically the book doing the describing - it's the author - but it's fine to use the book as the subject.

[XueyaoJ318]

Hi Instructor,

For (E), would it need to be a complete sentence after the semi-colon?

"Among the explanation cited are increasing worker mobility... poor financial planning... and excess complexity... " In this sentence, I understand the parallel structure for the underlined sections. However, it seems that there is no subject in this part of the sentence. (Looks like "among the explanation" can be removed without changing the meanings)

Can you explain/help me with the structure of (E)?

Thanks.

[Chelsey Cooley]

This is a sentence with a really weird structure, because it's backwards. The subject is actually the phrase "increasing worker mobility between companies, poor financial planning on the workers' part, and excess complexity in the plans themselves."

Here's an example to convince you that it's sometimes okay to put the subject at the end!

'Of the exhibits in the museum, the most impressive was the showcase on the history of combat.'

'Of the exhibits in the museum, the most impressive were the showcase on the history of combat and the display of prehistoric artwork.'

Notice how we go from 'was' to 'were', even though nothing prior to the verb changes? That's because the subject that requires agreement is actually the last bit of the sentence.