I know English very well just because I lived abroad, but my grammar sucks since I haven't had academically, so sorry if I ask stupid questions:
About A: the official guide says: " The second item in the series violates the parallelism required for the series..."
Is that because that "the harvesting" is a gerund/noun and "on cultivating" & "and exploiting" are verbs?
Also about B: I still couldn't completely fathom how harvestING, is parrallel to cultivation; are you saying, its because that they are all 3 non-verbs and in noun forms?
gmatpill wrote:Building on civilizations that preceded them in coastal Peru, the Mochica developed their own elaborate society, based on cultivating such crops like corn and beans, the harvesting of fish and shellfish, and exploiting other wild and domestic resources.
b) Based on the cultivation of such crops as corn and beans, the harvesting of fish and seafood, and the exploitation of
c) and basing it on the cultivation of crops like corn and beans, harvesting fish and seafood, and the exploiting of
d) and they based it on their cultivation of crops such as corn and beans, the harvest of fish and seafood, and exploiting
e) and they based it on their cultivating such crops like corn and beans, their harvest of fish and shellfish, and they explited
hwiya320, I was not satisfied with some of the explanations I saw, so here's my take:
Step 1: We quickly recognize that the underlined portion is next to a comma. Ask ourselves: "What is this underlined phrase describing?"
It's describing "society"
Step 2: we continue reading: "based on cultivating such crops like corn and beans"--and notice something wrong..."such crops like" should be "such crops AS"....so we already know (A) is incorrect.
Step 3: even we if didn't know the correct idiom, we continue reading and we see a series of commas with word "and" [..a, b, and c]
Are they all consistent?
based on:
a) cultivating...
b) the harvesting...
c) and exploiting...
AHA! The GMAT guys purposely did this to throw you off. Notice they all end in "ing"...so the average test taker would think this is OK.
WRONG!
Notice some of these "-ING" words are verbs and some are nouns!
You should see these keywords as:
based on:
a) cultivating corn----[verb]
b) [the act of] harvesting of fish [noun]
c) exploiting other resources [verb]
So even if you missed step 2)..you should have seen inconsistency here in step 3)
step 4: go through the other answer choices..only (B) has consistency in the 3 items.
based on:
a) the cultivation of
b) the harvesting of
c) the exploitation of
so you should be CONFIDENT that B is your answer and move on to your next question.
