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Idiom

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by g.shankaran » Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:06 am
Prospecting for gold during the California gold rush was a relatively easy task, because of erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds thrust to the surface by volcanic activity put gold literally within the reach for anybody with a pan or shovel.

A) because of erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds thrust to the surface by volcanic activity put gold literally within the reach for
B) because of erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and volcanic activity that thrust ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds to the surface and putting gold literally within reach of.
C) owing to erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and volcanic activity that had thrust ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds to the surface and putting gold literally within reach of.
D) since rosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and volcanic activity that thrust ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds to the surface,putting gold literally within reach for.
E) since erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds thrust to the surface by volcanic activity put gold literally within the reach of

OA E

Can you please provide some exp btw reach of and reach for?
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by itsmebharat » Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:12 am
Why B incorrect??
I am not an Expert, please feel free to suggest if there is an error.
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by atulmangal » Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:45 am
g.shankaran wrote:Prospecting for gold during the California gold rush was a relatively easy task, because of erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds thrust to the surface by volcanic activity put gold literally within the reach for anybody with a pan or shovel.

A) because of erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds thrust to the surface by volcanic activity put gold literally within the reach for
B) because of erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and volcanic activity that thrust ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds to the surface and putting gold literally within reach of.
C) owing to erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and volcanic activity that had thrust ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds to the surface and putting gold literally within reach of.
D) since rosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and volcanic activity that thrust ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds to the surface,putting gold literally within reach for.
E) since erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds thrust to the surface by volcanic activity put gold literally within the reach of

OA E

Can you please provide some exp btw reach of and reach for?
Reach Of:-

Something is in reach of someone.

Made up example:

The prey, Rabbit, is in the reach of Eagle

Reach for:-

Someone reach for something

Example from Cambridge dictionary:

He reached for the phone and knocked over a glass.

In this question as u can clearly see, something is in reach for everyone structure.
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by atulmangal » Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:48 am
itsmebharat wrote:Why B incorrect??
Apart from other errors in B, the major error is:

because of erosion, prehistoric glacier moment, and volcanic activity that thrust ancient, gold-bearing riverbeds to the surface and putting gold literally within reach of.

THAT introduced a relative clause and the verb is THRUST which is not parallel to the gerund PUTTING because the sentence after AND is a part of the relative clause only.
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:20 am
Great question here, everyone. A couple thoughts:

1) I clicked on this thread because of the title "Idiom". Before I even read it I knew that this question wouldn't be an Idiom question. I urge everyone here to reduce the frequency with which they use the word "idiom" by at least 75%. The GMAT overwhelmingly tests systematic, recurring errors - subject/verb agreement, verb tense, modifiers, etc. If you spend 90% of your time on those and 10% on idioms I still think you're studying idioms too much, but at least you're in the ballpark.

2) What I saw here was that, logically, we need this list of "erosion, glacier movement, and riverbeds" to each be a noun that "put gold within the reach of anybody with a shovel". Logically, it doesn't make sense to say: Prospecting was an easy task because of erosion. Or Prospecting was easy because of glacier movement. Why? How does one connect to the other?

What we need to have a logical meaning is for "Prospecting was an easy task because X, Y, and Z put gold literally within the reach of anybody with a shovel". And choice E is the only one that uses all three items as nouns that contributed to that proximity of gold.

3) If you told me I had to pick between the idioms "because" and "since" here, I'd pick "because". "Since" has sort of evolved to mean "because", but technically it doesn't (or at least shouldn't) mean that. But that's another tricky thing about idioms - common phrases or usages evolve over time or change region-to-region or country-to-country. So use idioms as a last resort, not as a first item of business.

I actually don't see anything definitively wrong with "for" in choice D, either. "With 20 meters to go the gold medal was in reach for 5 of the 8 runners in the race..." is perfectly fine. So if you're looking at this question as an Idiom question...I'm not surprised if you struggle with it. But if you look at the logic of subjects and verbs and a logical meaning, E is really the only sensible choice.
Brian Galvin
GMAT Instructor
Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep

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