Incorrect: important to thinking through?

[FangFang]

Business English Lesson, Advanced Level

ESL/EFL Test #228 "The Global Financial Environment (2)", question 4

Understanding the forces behind these phenomena is important to thinking ......... what they mean for policy.

(a) about
(b) of
(c) over
(d) through

Business English Lesson, Advanced Level

ESL/EFL Test #228 "The Global Financial Environment (2)", answer 4

Understanding the forces behind these phenomena is important to thinking through what they mean for policy.

Correct answer: (d) through
_________________________

Hi,

I think "thinking" was typed wrongly.

[Mister Micawber]

.
I don't think so, FF-- it's the gerund. At least, it looks OK as I am reading it in your post. Was it perhaps misspelled before?
.
_________________
Canadian-American native speaker
who teaches English for a living at Mister Micawber's
ESL cafe: Interview with Mr. Micawber

[FangFang]

Hi,MM
Yeah,it is the gerund___that's what I feel confused. "be important to do sth" seems ok , but I may have understood it wrongly. So you compared "understanding ...." with "thinking through....." , the point is how to understand "be important to " here, or there is another possibility that you think gerund is ok because "be important to doing sth" is ok??????

[Mister Micawber]

.
Yes, I think important to doing sth is OK, as an alternative structure to important for doing sth. Now, the grammar book may or may not support this, but that is the structure that was used in the original paper.

Reputable online examples are certainly available:

...that experience is important to providing quality care..

Good humidity, even moisture, and bright light are important to growing this species well.

This statutory limitation is important to adjudging institutional bias as this Court has reasoned that statutory restrictions placed on administrative adjudicators support a finding that a dispute resolution mechanism is not institutionally biased.

etc.

By the way, if I reorganize the structure of the statement, I can utilize the form with the infinitive:

In order to think through what they mean for policy, it is important to understand the forces behind these phenomena.
.
_________________
Canadian-American native speaker
who teaches English for a living at Mister Micawber's
ESL cafe: Interview with Mr. Micawber