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67. Congress is debating a bill requiring certain employers provide workers with unpaid leave so as to care for sick or newbom children.
(A) provide workers with unpaid leave so as to
(B) to provide workers with unpaid leave so as to
(C) provide workers with unpaid leave in order that they
(D) to provide workers with unpaid leave so that they can
(E) provide workers with unpaid leave and
Choices A, C, and E are ungrammatical because, in this context, requiring ... employers must be followed by an infinitive. These options display additional faults: in A, so as to fails to specify that the workers receiving the leave will be the people caring for the infants and children; in order that they, as used in C, is imprecise and unidiomatic; and E says that the bill being debated would require the employers themselves to care for the children. Choice B offers the correct infinitive, to provide, but contains the faulty so as to. Choice D is best.
我问一个也在备考GMAT的美国朋友（据她说她的voberl几乎可以全对，不过数学只能对一半 ）关于上面的红字，为什么so that可以而in order that 不行，她的回答我认为有一定价值，所以贴出来，大家讨论讨论！
Regarding that question. "so as to" and "in order that they" are both wordy. In other words, they use extra words that do not give the phrase meaning. These phrases would be wrong in ANY question on ANY test. The second I saw them I knew they made their choices wrong--they "set off alarms" ringing in my head! We were taught in school to avoid using phrases like this. Since you didn't learn English in an American high school that taught students how to write for exams, of course you don't understand well--I myself didn't understand the difference between these phrases until I was taught the difference in high school. "So that they can" would be right because it makes the sentence mean that the bill ENABLES people to care for children. The bill allows people TO BE ABLE TO care for children. "Can" means the same thing as "to be able to". This is what the sentence is trying to say, so it's the most meaningful word to use. The sentence with choice C. says "Bla bla ...requiring certain employers to provide unpaid leave in order that they care for sick...." could mean two things. It COULD mean that the providing of unpaid leave ENABLES employees to care for their loved ones. But it could also imply that the company is giving the employee leave almost as an order to take care of the sick person. "In order to" is a very direct phrase. It has a different meaning than "can". It carries the meaning that something has been facilitated, or made possible. But it also has an official connotation: the company provides leave to facilitate the taking care of the sick, as if the company wanted to take care of the sick person itself, but had to provide leave in order to do it. This is obviously not what the sentence means.
"Can" means the employee is free to take care of the sick person, the employee has the option to take care of the sick person, the employee now has the ability to take care of the sick person, whereas before the bill was passed, the employee didn't have the option or the ability to take care of the sick person because the employee COULDN"T do it, because the employee HAD TO go to work. If the employee didn't go to work, he/she would lose his/her job.
This is what "in context" means. You are supposed to know that the central issue for a bill like this is the freedom of the employee to do what is very important to him/her. The employee wants to take care of the sick, but can't if he/she will lose the job by taking time off. It is generally seen as unfair and cruel of companies to punish someone that's trying to help a sick loved one or baby. So before the bill is passed, the employee CAN"T take care of the sick, and after the bill is passed, the employee CAN.
[此贴子已经被作者于2005-4-26 15:19:41编辑过] | 
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发表于 2005-4-26 15:16:00
,但看了大家得说法，觉得也得辨正得看待老美得说法。
