Error Spotting

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Error Spotting

by mathur2012 » Sun Mar 05, 2017 10:44 am
I have a doubt regarding this sentence

Belgium chocolate is considered(A) / by many to be finer(B) / than any others in the world.(C)

I have to find out the error . After going through this post ( https://www.beatthegmat.com/considered-v ... tml#790182 ) , it seems to me error is in B part as " to be" is redundant but Is the C part correct ? I guess it should be "any other" instead of "any others" . Please help

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by ceilidh.erickson » Tue Mar 07, 2017 9:00 am
mathur2012 wrote:I have a doubt regarding this sentence

Belgium chocolate is considered(A) / by many to be finer(B) / than any others in the world.(C)

I have to find out the error . After going through this post ( https://www.beatthegmat.com/considered-v ... tml#790182 ) , it seems to me error is in B part as " to be" is redundant but Is the C part correct ? I guess it should be "any other" instead of "any others" . Please help
Idioms are by far the most frustrating part of SC! There are some idioms that the GMAT (and the English language in general) consistently agree on: e.g. we say "associate with" but never "associate to" or "associate of," etc.

There are certain idioms that the GMAT (and possibly most grammarians) think are incorrect, though they are common in spoken English (at least, I hear them commonly in American English): e.g. "different than" is considered incorrect, though it is often used. Only "different from" is considered correct.

Then... there are idioms that the GMAT seems to have changed its mind about in recent years. In past editions of OGs, "consider X Y" was always the usage found in correct answers, and "consider X to be Y" was found in wrong answers, even though experts agree that the latter construction is quite common and acceptable in spoken English. ("consider X as Y" is not considered acceptable).

However - the GMAT seems to have changed its mind on this idiom, as there have been recent sightings of "considered X to be Y" outside of the underlined portion. So you should no longer use this issue to eliminate answer choices!

In your example sentence:

(A) it should be "Belgian," not "Belgium."

(B) the "to be" is fine.

(C) You're right, it should be "any other." The word "any" indicates that we're making an individual comparison. We could say "it is finer than all others," or "these ones are finer than any others," but not "this one is finer than any others."
Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education