In assessing the problems faced by rural migrant workers, the question of whether they are better off materially than the urban working poor is irrelevant.
(A) In assessing the problems faced by rural migrant workers, the question of whether they are better off materially than the urban working poor is irrelevant.
(B) The question of whether the rural migrant worker is better off materially than the urban working poor is irrelevant in assessing the problems that they face.
(C) A question that is irrelevant in assessing the problems that rural migrant workers face is whether they are better off materially than the urban working poor.
(D) In an assessment of the problems faced by rural migrant workers, the question of whether they are better off materially than the urban working poor is irrelevant.
(E) The question of whether the rural migrant worker is better off materially than the urban working poor is irrelevant in an assessment of the problems that they face.

OA is D. Can you please explain why choices A and C are incorrect? Thanks.

(a)
major problem:
the opening modifier, 'in assessing ... workers', lacks a subject; i.e., it doesn't say who is doing the assessing.
such modifiers, which appear VERY frequently on the test, automatically take as their subject the immediately following noun.
therefore, this choice implies that the question itself is performing the assessments.
not good.

(c)
stylistic preference (see my post at or near the bottom of this thread): 'the problems faced by rural migrant workers' is better than 'the problems that rural migrant workers face'.

also, wordiness / circuitous writing / awkwardness: 'a question that is irrelevant in doing X is Y' is inferior to 'the question of Y is irrelevant in doing X', because the latter is clearer and more direct.

--

the pronoun 'they' is technically ambiguous in the correct answer ('problems' would be a grammatically acceptable antecedent as well), but it's either ambiguous (a, c, d) or outright wrong (b, e - mismatched singular/plural) in EVERY choice. therefore, this consideration doesn't narrow the choice among a, c, and d (although it does serve to eliminate b and e).

Ron
what is wrong with B and E.
I guess.... 1) they are long sentences without any punctuation in between.
2)More words in between they and rural migrant workers.
3) Irrelevant should have been followed by in something or somewhere (noun) and not a clause ( irrelevant in an assessment of the problems that they face.)

in B and E one problem is "THEY" - who is it referring to ??

yep, this is the major problem with those choices.

in fact, "they" refers to the WRONG people in choices (b) and (e). since "the rural migrant worker" is singular, "they" thus defaults to "the working poor".
this is a problem, because "they" is supposed to refer to rural migrant workers (plural).

@ron
doesnt the sentence in C sound incomplete to u. i mean the sentence is comparing the wrong things. "are better off materially than the urban working poor". what is ur take?

C is a complete sentence. Strip out some of the modifiers and this fact becomes more obvious, though the sentence still sounds clumsy, "A question ... is whether they are better off."

Hi Ron , I thought The phrase "in assessing " is an adverbial modifier and not a noun modifier here.

Isnt the phrase " in assessing " telling us what the "question" is relevant or irrelevant to .
What i mean is the Phrase "in assessing" higlights the issue the question is relevant to.
Even D has a beginning prepositional phrase .
We dont know about the subject who is doing the assessment in D either. Then why is D correct and A in correct.

overall it acts as an adverbial modifier, but, when this kind of modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence, the following subject must actually be the subject of the -ING verb.




this rule applies to modifiers that start with -ING or with preposition + -ING, not to modifiers that start with arbitrary prepositional phrases.
for other modifiers that must follow the same rule, see this post:
post49102.html#p49102