Because the management of a large corporation will often refer to macroecoomic forecasts when it plans for the future, it is probabale that its belief in their soundness is significant.

1. SAME

2. it is probable that the soundness of their belief would be significant

3. believing their soundness is probably not significant

4. the significance of their belief on its soundness is probable

5. its belief in their soundness is probably significant.[/u]

please post the source of this problem; if you do not, we'll have to delete it within a few days.

thanks.

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by the way, this is not CR; it's SC. CR are the problems with the cute little passages.

Hi Ron,
it has been picked up from the same source as the other one. Not from any of the enlisted not to be posted sites mentioned in the sticky.

hi -

please post the source on every thread; 'the other one' will become a completely meaningless concept as soon as the threads accrue a couple of responses and are separated from each other.

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is this question really from an indian test?
if so, it's extremely bizarre, in that it breaks with the indian tradition of using commonwealth (british) english. in traditional commonwealth english, collective nouns such as 'management' are plural, and would take the pronoun 'their' in this problem - but the only properly constructed answer choices use the singular pronoun 'its'. if this is really an indian test question, then we have the outré phenomenon of an indian exam testing american english. weird.

anyway:

choice a: the grammar is ok, although
- 'it' is a moving target (the first 'it' refers to 'that [the management's] belief ... is significant', while 'its' refers to 'the management')
- the phrasing is extremely wordy

choice b:
- 'their' is ambiguous - we don't know whether it's supposed to represent the management or the forecasts.
----- if it represents the forecasts, then there's no reference to who believes the forecasts, not to mention the fact that the wording is horribly unidiomatic (you can't say 'the forecasts' belief')
----- if it represents the management, then the pronoun is objectionable (in american usage - see above), and there's also no mention whatsoever of what they believe (this could mean religious beliefs, for all we know).
- 'would be' is in an inappropriate tense
- the phrasing is extremely wordy

choice c:
- the meaning is the direct opposite of what it's supposed to be (!), as the word 'not' has been inserted (are you sure that's supposed to be there?)
- no reference at all to the fact that this is the management's belief

choice d:
- the forecasts are fallaciously referenced by the singular pronoun 'its'
- words are switched in a way that totally changes the meaning of the sentence (the significance is probable, instead of 'the belief is probably significant')

choice e - correct
- proper pronouns
- concise
- doesn't change the meaning