Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals

[aaa]

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops among people in their common quest to conquer nature.

a. surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops
b. surfing’s appeal is its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops

c. surfing’s appeal to people is due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and developing camaraderie

d. surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, a backdrop that is unpredictable and that is, by turns, gracefully and serenely violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops

e.surfing appeals to people due to their unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops

This sentence contains three parallel elements: "the unusual confluence," "an unpredictable backdrop," and "the camaraderie." Additionally, the introductory modifying phrase "originally developed by ancient Hawaiians" correctly modifies the noun "surfing."
(A) CORRECT. This choice properly follows rules of parallel construction and uses the introductory phrase to correctly modify the noun "surfing."

Why are the 3 elements parallel? It looks like "the unusual confluence" and "an unpredictable backdrop" are modified nouns (adjective then noun) while camaraderie is just a noun.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[JadranLee]

A modified noun, such as "silk shirt", is sufficiently similar to an unmodified noun, such as "jeans", to count as parallel. Thus, the following sentence is correct:

Angus wore jeans and a silk shirt.

-Jad

[rte.sushil]

"because of having...", which is unidiomatic: "because of" must be followed by a noun.

Why because of having is unidiomatic because i have used this in many examples:(
can you shed some light on this so that i dnt have to cram it.

i have used as :
example: I couldn't do this work because of having a fear.
student- Visa was rejected for a student because of having his family in cananda.
(this is surely wrong: student visa was rejected for a student because of family in cananda)
if i dnt use having i will get the expression that because of his family , he could not get visa but the reason is that his family is there , and that the reason


thanks

[tim]

are you telling us something is properly idiomatic because YOU have used it many times? please understand the GMAT is the entity that decides what is and isn't idiomatic. have you ever seen this expression used correctly on the GMAT? if not, then you need to memorize the rule - especially if you are used to using the phrase incorrectly..

[rte.sushil]

are you telling us something is properly idiomatic because YOU have used it many times? please understand the GMAT is the entity that decides what is and isn't idiomatic. have you ever seen this expression used correctly on the GMAT? if not, then you need to memorize the rule - especially if you are used to using the phrase incorrectly..

Thanks for clarifying. It seems i was under the wrong usage.

Just to clarify on these 2 below examples:
I couldn't do this work because of having a fear.
student- Visa was rejected for a student because of having his family in cananda.

so can i say:
I couldn't do this work because of FEAR. (but who has fever ? can i assume here that I have fever as per sentence).
Student- Visa was rejected for a student because of his family is in cananda?

Please confirm.

Thanks!!

[jnelson0612]

are you telling us something is properly idiomatic because YOU have used it many times? please understand the GMAT is the entity that decides what is and isn't idiomatic. have you ever seen this expression used correctly on the GMAT? if not, then you need to memorize the rule - especially if you are used to using the phrase incorrectly..

Thanks for clarifying. It seems i was under the wrong usage.

Just to clarify on these 2 below examples:
I couldn't do this work because of having a fear.
student- Visa was rejected for a student because of having his family in cananda.

so can i say:
I couldn't do this work because of FEAR. (but who has fever ? can i assume here that I have fever as per sentence).
Student- Visa was rejected for a student because of his family is in cananda?

Please confirm.

Thanks!!

Hi there,
I'm not sure if you are using "fear" or "fever" for the first one, but I'll use "fear".

The correct way to say these sentences is:
I was unable to complete this work because of my fear of failure. (I added the last part; we would usually want to know why there is fear)
This student's visa was rejected because his family is in Canada.

[UtkarshS279]

Hello Tim, Jamie,

The official explanation states that 'its' in '...its unusual confluence of...' not having a clear antecedent is another reason why option 'b' is wrong.
However, 'its' refers to 'surfing's', and since a possessive pronoun can point to a possessive noun, the reason shouldn't hold ground.

Am i right?

[tim]

Interesting. As near as I can tell, a new version of this question was created for our question pool about 5 years ago, and it makes no reference to the pronoun. I assumed the old question would have been removed from circulation when the new one entered the pool. How recently did you take a practice test that gave this version of the problem (along with the explanation you refer to)?

[UtkarshS279]

Interesting. As near as I can tell, a new version of this question was created for our question pool about 5 years ago, and it makes no reference to the pronoun. I assumed the old question would have been removed from circulation when the new one entered the pool. How recently did you take a practice test that gave this version of the problem (along with the explanation you refer to)?

Quite recently, actually. However, it is a question bank that has borrowed heavily from the OGs and Verbal supplements, including other sources,
Although I haven't seen any error in any of its other explanations (rechecked online and with OG the ones I got wrong), but it might be that something went amiss here.

Thanks for confirming my point about possessive pronouns.

BR,
Utkarsh

[tim]

I'm confused. Our practice tests draw ZERO questions from the sources you mentioned. And if you took a practice test from some other source that used our questions, they have pirated our questions. Can you clarify what you mean? I'm trying to identify whether you took one of our practice tests recently and saw this version of this problem. If someone has stolen our intellectual property and made practice tests out of them, we cannot control whether they are using an archaic version of our problem that we have subsequently revised.

[Kovid]

Why "graceful with labored, serene with violent" is not represented as a list in this case.

I read the explanation but did not get it. Can someone elaborate the explanation given for this piece.

" The idiom "by turns" typically indicates a set of contrasting events or characteristics. Each pair provides two contrasting words: graceful with labored, serene with violent. When using this idiom, the two pairs can be matched together rather than presented as a 4-item list. "

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Why "graceful with labored, serene with violent" is not represented as a list in this case.

I believe that this may be an old version of the problem. Try checking out this thread: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 16099.html

I read the explanation but did not get it. Can someone elaborate the explanation given for this piece.
" The idiom "by turns" typically indicates a set of contrasting events or characteristics. Each pair provides two contrasting words: graceful with labored, serene with violent. When using this idiom, the two pairs can be matched together rather than presented as a 4-item list. "

Most lists in English take the form "x, y, and z" (of course, potentially with more than 3 elements). However, it is sometimes possible to make a list without 'and'. Take this example: "He lost his money, his job, his home." Leaving out the 'and' gives it an emotional force, emphasizing the extent of his loss and suggesting that he lost even more than the things listed. Of course, emotional force is not usually found in GMAT examples, so this is an unusual one.

As I describe in the thread linked above, parallelism is the best way to approach this problem and eliminate the wrong answers.