A 3 min read

After weeks of uncertainty about the course the country would pursue to stabilize its troubled economy, officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund, pledging the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline as that which was originally promised and to keep inflation below ten percent.

 

Meaning Analysis

• After weeks of uncertainty about the course the country would pursue
  • to stabilize its troubled economy, 

The sentence starts by talking about a doubt regarding the decision some country would take with the intention to steady its disturbed economy. It says after this doubt had lingered on for some time, signalling that we are going to learn about some event that happened later. Let’s read on to find out what that event is.

• officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund,

In this portion, we get to know that the incident that took later dealt with a decision the officials of the country took to steady the economy. They revamped an agreement with a global financial organization. Reading further:

• pledging
• the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline
• as that which was originally promised and
• to keep inflation below ten percent.

This part tells us about the revamped agreement. Per the agreement, the officials promised they would work towards a better budget discipline, as was promised earlier. They would also keep the inflation below a certain level.

 

To sum up, the sentence says that after a prolonged doubt about what should be done to steady the disturbed economy of a  country, some officials of the country revamped an agreement with a global financial institution. Per the agreement the officials zeroed in on two steps:

1. to achieve greater budget discipline and
2. to maintain the inflation below a certain level.

 

 

 

Error Analysis

 

 

1.  Parallelism Error

 

Per the sentence, the officials of the country decided to do two things. However, these two things, the enforcement and to keep, are not grammatically parallel. This list can be made parallel in the following way:

 

…pledging

• to enforce and
• to keep

 

2.  Idiom Error

 

The sentence uses the incorrect comparison idiom greater X as Y. The correct idiom is greater X than Y.

 

POE

Incorrect

 

This choice has the errors pointed out in the error analysis.

Incorrect  

 

Parallelism Error

 

Per this choice, the two steps taken by officials of the country are …the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline… and …keeping inflation below…. These entities are not grammatically parallel. One way to correct this error is to represent these actions as to enforce substantially… and to keep inflation below….

Correct

 

This choice corrects both the errors of Choice A. It uses two parallel entities …to enforce… and …to keep… and also uses the correct comparison idiom greater X than Y.  If we elaborate this idiom, we get the following structure:

 

…greater budget discipline than (the budget discipline) originally promised …

 

Use of ellipses and removal of the which clause makes this choice precise.

Incorrect

 

Parallelism Error

 

The two steps …to enforce… and …keeping inflation… are not grammatically parallel.

Incorrect

 

Idiom Error

 

This choice repeats the idiom error present in Choice A.