Separately and Independently

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Separately and Independently

by SmarpanGamt » Thu Oct 28, 2010 4:11 am
One benefit of learning to speak a language while learning to read it rather than separately is that the student can more effectively apply his or her knowledge in social settings.
(A) rather than separately
(B) rather than independently
(C) instead of separately
(D) instead of as separate processes
(E) rather than in a separate process

Please explain each of the choice . OA IS E
Source: — Sentence Correction |

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by Isaac@EconomistGMAT » Fri Oct 29, 2010 3:35 pm
This is not the greatest GMAT question but let's look at the parallelism going on:

The construction is : One benefit of X rather than Y

In this case X is a noun (learning to speak...while learning to...) so Y should also be a noun. This eliminates the first 3 answer choices as these are adverbs AND do not make much sense because the comparison is between the original process (of learning the two skills together) and the adverbs (separately and independently). Here is an example:

He would rather eat ice cream than quickly

Doesn't make much sense, does it?

What are left are D and E. D is wrong because the original sentence refers to one process, not many, so this would constitute a change in meaning too. Now, although the nouns are very different, they are still nouns; not only this, by using the word 'process' this avoids repetition of what was said in the first half of the sentence.
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by SmarpanGamt » Fri Oct 29, 2010 8:45 pm
Thanks .Good Explaination

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