Gmat Prep 3

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by stormier » Sat Feb 19, 2011 6:28 am
"streaming" is incorrect in choice C.

Had the choice been - Besides heat and light, the sun is also the source of a continuous stream of ....., choice C would have been correct.

Choice D uses the correct idiom and has a parallel structure - not only of X but also of Y

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by tetura84 » Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:16 pm
stormier wrote:"streaming" is incorrect in choice C.

Had the choice been - Besides heat and light, the sun is also the source of a continuous stream of ....., choice C would have been correct.
can you please provide some detail analysis regarding streaming? what part of speech it is? what role it is playing here? etc. Thanks.
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by btgyes » Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:27 am
stormier wrote:"streaming" is incorrect in choice C.

Had the choice been - Besides heat and light, the sun is also the source of a continuous stream of ....., choice C would have been correct.

Choice D uses the correct idiom and has a parallel structure - not only of X but also of Y
what if there is RAINING in place of STREAMING....?

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by stormier » Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:43 am
Actually, there is another flaw in the sentence, and perhaps a more serious one. Maybe, both stream and streaming are fine. Both phrases

continuous stream of particles
, and
continuous streaming of particles behave as nouns and make sense.

Here's the real flaw -

Besides heat and light, the sun is also the source of .......


The sentence as above is ambiguous. It could be interpreted as -

Heat and light are the source of continuous stream....and besides heat and light, sun is also the source of continuous stream....

The above could be inferred from the sentence as written, and is clearly not the intended meaning of the sentence.

Besides heat and light, the sun.....
- heat, light and sun are treated as equivalent.

To convey the intended meaning unambiguously, it could have been written as --

Besides being the source of heat and light, the sun is also the source of....... -> Although awkward, this sentence now is unambiguous. In this structure the phrase before comma correctly modifies the sun. In the original form (choice C), besides heat and light does not modify the sun.

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by btgyes » Sun Feb 20, 2011 6:29 am
stormier wrote:Actually, there is another flaw in the sentence, and perhaps a more serious one. Maybe, both stream and streaming are fine. Both phrases

continuous stream of particles
, and
continuous streaming of particles behave as nouns and make sense.

Here's the real flaw -

Besides heat and light, the sun is also the source of .......


The sentence as above is ambiguous. It could be interpreted as -

Heat and light are the source of continuous stream....and besides heat and light, sun is also the source of continuous stream....

The above could be inferred from the sentence as written, and is clearly not the intended meaning of the sentence.

Besides heat and light, the sun.....
- heat, light and sun are treated as equivalent.

To convey the intended meaning unambiguously, it could have been written as --

Besides being the source of heat and light, the sun is also the source of....... -> Although awkward, this sentence now is unambiguous. In this structure the phrase before comma correctly modifies the sun. In the original form (choice C), besides heat and light does not modify the sun.

AWESOME Dear...!


when a person himself is clear what he is talking about then it directly gets embedded into other people's minds...!

thanks a lot...!

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