The Health Commissioner Said that The Government had Implemented Strict Measures to Eradicate the Contaminated Food

Question: The health commissioner said that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food and, despite the recent illnesses, it will try to prevent the outbreak from recurring in the future.

(A) it will try
(B) that it tried
(C) it had tried
(D) it would have tried
(E) that it would try

“The health commissioner said that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food”- is a GMAT sentence correction question. This particular GMAT sentence correction topic has been taken from the book ‘The Official Guide of GMAT Verbal Review, 2nd Edition, 2009’. This question checks Tenses and Parallelism. GMAT Sentence Correction questions comprise 11-16 questions to be completed within 65 minutes. Each Sentence Correction question contains a sentence with an underlined portion that includes 0-2 errors.

Answer: E

Explanation: The concepts tested here are:

1. Tenses
2. Parallelism

Option A: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it uses the “will+base form of the verb” to describe a future action from a point of time in the past. Always remember that the “will+base form of the verb” is used to refer to such events. Also, it fails to maintain parallelism between “that the government has implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food" and "it will try to prevent the outbreak from recurring in the future". So, Option A is incorrect.

Option B: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it uses the simple past tense verb “tried” to refer to an event that will take place in the future. Always remember simple future tense is used to describe the events in the future. So, Option B is incorrect.

Option C: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it incorrectly uses the past perfect tense verb “had tried” to describe an action that will take place in the future. Also, it fails to maintain parallelism between "that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food" and "it had tried to prevent the outbreak from recurring in the future". So, Option C is incorrect.

Option D: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it uses the construction “would+have+past participle” to refer to an event that will take place in the future. Also, it could not maintain parallelism between "that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food" and "it would have tried to prevent the outbreak from recurring in the future". So, Option D is incorrect.

Option E: Correct
This option is correct because it uses the simple future tense “would try” to describe an event that will take place in the future. Also, it maintains a parallel between "that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food" and "that it would try to prevent the outbreak from recurring in the future". Option E is correct.

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