anant03 wrote:Though laypeople often refer to the panda as a bear, due to its physical resemblance to one, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than any member of the bear family.
You can get this question right in multiple ways. If you know the difference between
due to and
because of, you can eliminate some answer choices by using that decision point. If you don't know the difference, you can still find the answer.
This illustrates a key thing you can do to achieve a high SC hit rate. If you are not sure about how to use one decision point, use another.
A) due to its physical resemblance to one, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than
Due to is used to create adjective like structures and can roughly be translated to
caused by. So this answer choice can be eliminated by noting that
refer is a verb and therefore requires an adverbial modifier rather than and adjectivial one. Alternatively you could just substitute
caused by for
due to and see that
caused by its physical resemblance does not make sense.
Someone who is not sure about
due to could still probably eliminate this answer choice because of a parallelism or meaning issue toward the end. Rather than saying that the panda is more closely related to the raccoon than
to any member of the bear family, the sentence created using this answer choice leaves out the
to after
than, creating a possibly non parallel form and thus conveying a meaning different from the one I believe it's supposed to convey. Does that make the choice obviously wrong? Maybe not, but an SC hacker could figure out that it is probably wrong by looking at the other answer choices and seeing that some of them do have a
to after
than.
You want to get SC right? Be a hacker.
B) due to the fact that it physically resembles one, DNA testing showed that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than is
This choice includes the
due to issue again. If you don't see that, you might be able to eliminate this one because it conveys not that the panda is more closely related to the raccoon than to any member of the bear family, but rather than the panda is more closely related to the raccoon than any member of the bear family is.
Is that subtly sketchy meaning enough to indicate that this choice should be eliminated? Hey if you don't have anything else to go on, you just might win doing that. Let's see.
Meanwhile, there is another issue with this one.
due to the fact that is a little wordy.
C) because of its physical resemblance to one, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than
Now we have the correct structure,
because of. When
because of is used, adverb like structures are created, and an adverbial structure is the right type of structure for modifying
refer.
So is this choice the best answer? I see others below that also use
because of.
Looking at this answer choice we see that it includes the same parallelism/meaning issue that A has. Hmm. So I think that we can kill two birds with one stone here. If the other answer choices have a better meaning and structure, we can eliminate this one, and also any adept hacker can may decide to use elimination of this choice as confirmation that choice A can be eliminated, even without knowing that
due to is wrong there.
D) because of its resemblance to one physically, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than is
This choice has
because of, but also has slight the meaning issue that choice B has. So probably B and D are BOTH out.
This one also includes an awkward structure that the others don't, the structure
because of its resemblance to one physically.
Just one left!!!!
E) because of its physical resemblance to one, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than to
This one uses
because of, the sentence created using it is well structured, AND the meaning conveyed is the meaning I have been looking for the entire time, that the panda is more closely related to the raccoon
than to any member of the bear family.
Bingo.
So we could eliminate A, B, C, and D on meaning alone, even if we didn't know about the difference between
due to and
because of, and once again hack our way to SC success.
I don't think that this is an official question and I am not sure that an official question would employ such a subtle difference in meaning as a decision point. Any of the meanings here could somehow make sense. Still, the point stands. Getting SC right can often or even always be done via clever hacking, and the creators of the GMAT have no problem with that being the case. GMAT verbal is way more a hacking test than it is an English test.
Choose
E.
