true hibernators

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true hibernators

by perfectstranger » Tue Jun 16, 2009 4:36 pm
19. In contrast to true hibernators such as woodchucks and hedgehogs, whose body temperatures drop close to the freezing point during the winter months, the body temperature of bears remains nearly normal throughout their prolonged sleep.
(A) the body temperature of bears remains nearly normal
(B) a nearly normal body temperature is maintained by bears
(C) a bear's body temperature remains nearly normal
(D) a bear maintains a body temperature that is nearly normal
(E) bears maintain a nearly normal body temperature
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Re: true hibernators

by rs2010 » Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:51 pm
perfectstranger wrote:19. In contrast to true hibernators such as woodchucks and hedgehogs, whose body temperatures drop close to the freezing point during the winter months, the body temperature of bears remains nearly normal throughout their prolonged sleep.
(A) the body temperature of bears remains nearly normal..out
(B) a nearly normal body temperature is maintained by bears...passive
(C) a bear's body temperature remains nearly normal..out
(D) a bear maintains a body temperature that is nearly normal...out
(E) bears maintain a nearly normal body temperature
Since their is used so you need bears while maintaining the parallel structure.

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by ajay_deepak » Tue Jun 16, 2009 9:54 pm
I will go with E.
In contrast to hibernators..........bears...... makes proper construction.

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by rah_pandey » Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:20 pm
Since it is a contrast question therefore the things contrasted should be parallel

whose body temperatures ......is parallel to a bear's body temparature

C looks correct. what is the correct answer?

D & E talk about maintaining the body temp but for hedgehogs it does not talk about maintaining body temp

A "remains" does not gel with "bears"

B again talks about maintaining body temp therefore wrong IMO

What i also think is that the first part talks about two animals and so plural is used. Not necessary with bear

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by mehravikas » Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:29 pm
IMO - E

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by rseeker2 » Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:36 pm
Agree with Ajay... E

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Re: true hibernators

by thetrystero » Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:55 pm
perfectstranger wrote:19. In contrast to true hibernators such as woodchucks and hedgehogs, whose body temperatures drop close to the freezing point during the winter months, the body temperature of bears remains nearly normal throughout their prolonged sleep.
(A) the body temperature of bears remains nearly normal
(B) a nearly normal body temperature is maintained by bears
(C) a bear's body temperature remains nearly normal
(D) a bear maintains a body temperature that is nearly normal
(E) bears maintain a nearly normal body temperature
"maintains" is incorrect idiom.
temperature drops <-> temperature remains

C more clearly associates "body temperature" with "bear", as opposed to other objects in the previous clause.

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by thetrystero » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:00 am
@perfectstranger: OA please.

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by lunarpower » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:58 am
i doubt that this problem is official, as the beginning words ("in contrast to") are somewhat awkward. if this were an official question, it would just start with "unlike".
still, it's a pretty good problem.

to better resolve these sorts of things, it helps to cut out modifiers and leave the "skeleton" of the sentence.

here, "whose body temp..." is a modifier, and so can be excised, leaving:
in contrast to true hibernators such as woodchucks and hedgehogs, _____

this is a DIRECT COMPARISON, and so absolute parallelism (of both grammar and ideas) is parallel between "true hibernators" and the subject of the ___ part.

this means that the subject of the ____ must be an animal (since true hibernators are animals), and, ideally, should be a plural noun (i.e., "bears" is better than "a bear" for reasons of parallelism).

(e) wins on these criteria alone.

note also that the plural "bears" is required to correspond to the plural pronoun "their" that appears in the non-underlined part.

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the posters here who chose answer (c) need an intensive review of both parallelism and pronouns.
the presence of "their" provides for IMMEDIATE elimination of anything that doesn't contain the plural "bears". if you don't see this VERY quickly, you need to review pronouns.
also, you should be able to look at "a bear's body temperature" and know at once that it's not parallel to the animals mentioned earlier, because a bear's body temperature is not an animal.
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by perfectstranger » Wed Jun 17, 2009 6:25 am
This is from the Paper Test Code 31 #19 OA is E . I choosed D what's wrong with D?
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by rs2010 » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:03 am
perfectstranger wrote:This is from the Paper Test Code 31 #19 OA is E . I choosed D what's wrong with D?
D uses bear and sentence mentions their in later part of the sentence so you need to start with plural

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by thetrystero » Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:53 pm
@lunarpower: thanks for the very clear explanation.