hey_thr67 wrote:Although I am asking a age old question, MANHATTAN has preferred usage of instead to that of rather in the following sentence,

(In idiom chapter)
(Correct) They avoided the arcade and INSTEAD went to a movie.
(Wrong) They avoided the arcade,RATHER going to a movie.

Can somebody explain the reason for it.

In general, use instead when you're replacing one thing with another thing.
Use rather than to show preference for one thing over another thing.

So, for example, in the sentence, "Darren's company now supplies every employee with a pen instead of a pencil", Darren's company has replaced pens with pencils. In this instance, there is no preference indicated, so instead is appropriate HERE.

Conversely, in the sentence, "Cleo decided to run rather than walk," we can see that Cleo has a preference for running, so rather than is appropriate here.

In the MGMAT example, are the people replacing the arcade trip with going to a movie, or are they showing a preference? It's hard to say.

The whole instead/rather than issue is quite contentious, since it's hard to determine intent in a sentence. For this reason, it's unlikely that the GMAT would have a Sentence Correction question that relies solely on the instead/rather than distinction.

Having said that, test-takers should keep in mind that the GMAT seems to prefer rather than over instead of.

Cheers,
Brent