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digital cameras and cellular phones

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digital cameras and cellular phones

by nahid078 » Wed Sep 03, 2014 12:14 pm
Like digital cameras and cellular phones are, portable devices used for personal audio entertainment are becoming extremely popular.


A) Like digital cameras and cellular phones are, portable devices used for personal audio entertainment are becoming extremely popular

B)Portable devices used for personal audio entertainment are becoming extremely popular, as digital cameras and cellular phones

C)Portable devices used for personal audio entertainment, such as digital cameras and cellular phones, are becoming extremely popular

D)As digital cameras and cellular phones, portable devices used for personal audio entertainment are becoming extremely popular

E)Like digital cameras and cellular phones, portable devices used for personal audio entertainment are becoming extremely popular
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by David@GMATPrepNow » Thu Sep 04, 2014 9:09 am
Hi nahid078,

The correct answer is E. Most students will correctly eliminate A, B and D because of misplaced words and other egregious sentence structure problems. That leaves C and E to closely examine.

C) Portable devices used for personal audio entertainment, such as digital cameras and cellular phones, are becoming extremely popular

At first this looks reasonable. But look at "audio" in bold, and compare that with "camera" in the list of examples of portable devices. Cameras are not used for audio entertainment. They take pictures, i.e. they are visual devices, not audio devices.

E) Like digital cameras and cellular phones, portable devices used for personal audio entertainment are becoming extremely popular

This is correct. The sentence says that a number of devices are becoming popular, including cameras, phones, AND portable devices for audio entertainment.
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by prada » Wed Jun 15, 2016 11:19 am
David@GMATPrepNow wrote:Hi nahid078,

The correct answer is E. Most students will correctly eliminate A, B and D because of misplaced words and other egregious sentence structure problems. That leaves C and E to closely examine.

C) Portable devices used for personal audio entertainment, such as digital cameras and cellular phones, are becoming extremely popular

At first this looks reasonable. But look at "audio" in bold, and compare that with "camera" in the list of examples of portable devices. Cameras are not used for audio entertainment. They take pictures, i.e. they are visual devices, not audio devices.

E) Like digital cameras and cellular phones, portable devices used for personal audio entertainment are becoming extremely popular

This is correct. The sentence says that a number of devices are becoming popular, including cameras, phones, AND portable devices for audio entertainment.
Im kinda surprised that they would solely test for such a thing. (i.e audio)
I believe SUCH AS is to give examples and LIKE is something that is similar.
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by ceilidh.erickson » Fri Jun 17, 2016 8:24 am
Im kinda surprised that they would solely test for such a thing. (i.e audio)
I believe SUCH AS is to give examples and LIKE is something that is similar.
Sentence Correction is primarily a test of LOGIC, not grammar. So it's not enough just to follow modifier rules - we need to ask if it's logical for one thing to modify another. I tend to agree with you that this question (which is from Economist GMAT) is pickier about classifications than any I've seen on the real GMAT. It's not outside the realm of a reasonable meaning test, though, in my opinion.

As for the SUCH AS v. LIKE issue... you're correct about what the GMAT has tested in the past. But! We have brand new information from OG 2017 that indicates that the GMAT changed its mind about this idiom! See here:

"In question 685, though, the non-underlined portion uses the word like to mean for example. Further, there are no questions in either OG 2017 edition SC chapter that specifically make you choose between like and such as. (Not purely. There's one that does have these words, but the issue there is a little different...it makes you choose not between such as and like but between such as and such like. Such like is...not a real phrase.)

What does this mean? Language does change over time, and, currently, people do use like to mean for example. So I'd guess that we don't need to worry about this particular issue any longer. (Though, again, such like is not an idiom. :))"

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... on-part-3/
Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
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