GMAT Prep Question From Student – Don’t Confuse Idioms With Real Grammar Errors

Here are some examples of linking verbs where the first verb leads into the second verb. These are preferred–though they do not necessarily other forms are incorrect:
I want her to study.
The law requires you to make…
She recommends I vote.
She recommends me to vote.

These examples are a bit different from the one in the question. These are in the form of A wants something out of B. She wants me to vote. The law requires you to make. etc..

In the above question, both forms (With or without the “to”) are acceptable. “She helped me grow the business” and “she helped me to grow the business”–both are ok.

So the question here is not testing which one is right or wrong.
She helped grow the business. —ok
She helped to grow the business. —ok
She helped shape public opinion. —ok
She helped to shape public opinion. —ok

There are always preferred and non-preferred ways of wording things on the GMAT. Your job is to figure out what ELSE is being tested. If there are other problems in the questions–focus on those.

Notice in an example where both forms are acceptable, you will never be in a situation where you need to choose one or the other because there will be other errors in the sentence.

In (C), the problem is the word “like” since you should be using the form of “such…as..” rather than “such….like…”

In (A), the problem is also the word “like”—”like” should not be used when giving an example. “Like” should be used in comparing two things.
Here you are providing examples of “fundamentally important areas”—for this you use “as.”

So this question is not testing “shape vs to shape”–it is testing “such as vs like.”