Parallelism +idiom Og 127

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dextar: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 100; Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:08 amFollowed by: 1 member; Location: INDIA; Thanked: 3 times

by dextar » Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:25 am

Found throughout Central and South America , sloths hang from trees by long rubber limbs and sleep 15 hours a day, moving infrequently enough that two species of algae grow on its coast and between its toes.

1) sloths hang from trees by long rubber limbs and sleep 15 hours a day, moving infrequently enough
2) sloths hang from trees by long rubber limbs , they sleep 15 hours a day, and with such infrequent movements.
3) Sloths use their long rubber limbs to hang from trees, sleep 15 hours a day, and move so infrequently.
4) the sloth hangs from trees by its long rubber limbs , sleeping 15 hours a day and moving so infrequently.
5) the sloth hangs from trees by its long rubber limbs , sleeps 15 hours a day, and it moves infrequently enough
I'm confused about how to choose the right parallelism here. Pls help

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:25 am

Stuart@KaplanGMAT: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 3225; Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:40 pmFollowed by: 614 members; Location: Toronto; Thanked: 1710 times; GMAT Score:800

Re: Parallelism +idiom Og 127

by Stuart@KaplanGMAT » Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:16 pm

dextar wrote:Found throughout Central and South America , sloths hang from trees by long rubber limbs and sleep 15 hours a day, moving infrequently enough that two species of algae grow on its coast and between its toes.

1) sloths hang from trees by long rubber limbs and sleep 15 hours a day, moving infrequently enough
2) sloths hang from trees by long rubber limbs , they sleep 15 hours a day, and with such infrequent movements.
3) Sloths use their long rubber limbs to hang from trees, sleep 15 hours a day, and move so infrequently.
4) the sloth hangs from trees by its long rubber limbs , sleeping 15 hours a day and moving so infrequently.
5) the sloth hangs from trees by its long rubber limbs , sleeps 15 hours a day, and it moves infrequently enough
I'm confused about how to choose the right parallelism here. Pls help

Scanning the choices, the first split we see is "sloths" vs "the sloth".

As always, we use the non-underlined part to help us decide.

At the end of the sentence, we have "grow on its coat...". "Sloths" doesn't agree with "its" (we'd have to use "their" instead), so eliminate (1), (2) and (3).

(4) and (5) have differently constructed lists. Each one sounds pretty good until we get to "it moves infrequently enough" in (5). "it" disrupts the parallelism of the sentence, so eliminate (5). Also, "moving so infrequently" is less awkward than "moves infrequently enough".

Choose (4).

Stuart Kovinsky | Kaplan GMAT Faculty | Toronto

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dextar: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 100; Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:08 amFollowed by: 1 member; Location: INDIA; Thanked: 3 times

by dextar » Tue Mar 04, 2008 11:45 pm

Hi Thanks for the reply

However, in option 4 , 'sleeping 15 hours' a day is disturbing the parallelism. Shouldn't it be 'sleeps 15 hours' so that it sounds better with 'hangs from trees' ?

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camitava: Legendary Member; Posts: 645; Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2007 4:37 amFollowed by: 5 members; Location: India; Thanked: 34 times

by camitava » Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:43 am

dextar,
I would like to mention one thing here -
As already mentioned by Stuart, we have to select between 4 and 5. Now in 5, it is using enough .... that - ,I think, which is unidiomatic. Its better to go for 4 then. Now according to ur doubt, here parallelism is coming between sleeping 15 hours a day and moving so infrequently and the sloth hangs from trees by its long rubber limbs is the main clause which is not coming into the parallelism question with the other phrases. So it is fine!
But if u look 5, it is using all the three clauses but no phrases at all. And it is having the problem mentioned by Stuart and me(above).
Got me, dextar?

Correct me If I am wrong

Regards,

Amitava

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dextar: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 100; Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:08 amFollowed by: 1 member; Location: INDIA; Thanked: 3 times

by dextar » Wed Mar 05, 2008 3:53 am

Hi
I got ur point man

I need to know the cmoparison to judge parallelism

I've been unable to get out of this parallelism problem of late(nearly completed the SC from OG..

). I know I need to distinguish between what is parallel to what.

I'm getting lot of questions wrong in this way. Pls suggest me what to do.
I saw many questions in OG testing the same thing.

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humeixia: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 27; Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:20 pm; Thanked: 1 times

by humeixia » Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:46 am

It is always difficult to seek balance.

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