The technology company faced declining market share in the mobile device sector. At their quarterly meeting, the executive team seriously...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

First sentence:

• The technology company faced declining market share in the mobile device sector.

Second sentence:

• At their quarterly meeting,
• the executive team seriously considered (?) their smartphone division entirely and focusing instead on software development and cloud services.

Where (?) = eliminate/to eliminate/eliminating/eliminated

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start from the beginning:

The first sentence sets up the situation:

• "The technology company faced declining market share in the mobile device sector"
  • The company is struggling - fewer people are buying their mobile devices.

Now the second sentence tells us what happened at a meeting:

• "At their quarterly meeting, the executive team seriously considered..."

This is where we have the blank. Let's look at our choices:

• eliminate (base form)
• to eliminate (infinitive with "to")
• eliminating (the -ing form)
• eliminated (past tense form)

To see what works here, let's read the rest of the sentence and understand what it's saying!

The sentence continues:

• "...their smartphone division entirely and focusing instead on software development and cloud services"

Now let's understand what this complete phrase is telling us:

• The executive team considered two related things:
  • Getting rid of their smartphone division entirely
  • Shifting their focus to software and cloud services instead

So they're weighing a major strategic change - stop making phones, focus on software.

What do we notice about the structure here?

• There's an "and" connecting two actions: "______ their smartphone division" and "focusing instead on software"
  • These two things are what the team considered doing
  • They're parallel - both are potential actions being contemplated
• Notice that "focusing" is in the -ing form
  • This is what we call a gerund - a verb form that acts like a noun
  • "Focusing" here is a thing they considered (not an action currently happening)
• For parallel structure, both items in the list should match the same form:
  • considered [X-ing] and [focusing]
• Also, when you're talking about contemplating an action, the verb "consider" is followed by the -ing form:
  • We say "considered doing something"
  • NOT "considered to do something"

So we need the -ing form: eliminating

This gives us: "considered eliminating their smartphone division entirely and focusing instead on software development and cloud services"

The correct answer is C: eliminating

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Verbs That Take Gerunds (the -ing form)

Some verbs are followed by gerunds rather than infinitives when they take another verb as their complement. "Consider" is one of these verbs.

The Pattern:
When you're talking about thinking about doing something (contemplating an action), you use:

• consider + gerund (-ing form)
• Example: "We considered moving to a new office"
• NOT: "We considered to move to a new office"

Other verbs that work the same way:

• "They enjoyed working together" (not "enjoyed to work")
• "She avoided making the same mistake" (not "avoided to make")
• "He suggested trying a different approach" (not "suggested to try")

In this question:

• "The executive team seriously considered eliminating their smartphone division"
• The gerund "eliminating" acts as a noun - it's the thing they considered
• It's not describing an action currently happening; it's naming a potential action they contemplated

Additional factor - Parallel Structure:
When you list multiple things after "consider," they should be in the same form:

• "considered eliminating their smartphone division and focusing on software"
• Both "eliminating" and "focusing" are gerunds in parallel structure
• Both are things the team thought about doing

(This verb complementation pattern, where certain verbs require gerunds while others require infinitives, is tested frequently on the SAT.)