Sentence Correction

If Dr. Wade was right, any apparent connection of the eating of highly processed foods and excelling at sports is purely coincidental.

A) If Dr. Wade was right, any apparent connection of the eating of
B) Should Dr. Wade be right, any apparent connection of eating
C) IF Dr. Wade is right, any connection that is apparent between eating of
D) If Dr. Wade is right, any apparent connection between eating
E) Should Dr.Wade have been right, any connection apparent between eating.

The OE says that 'excelling' is a participle!! Can't believe this. According to me, 'excelling', as used here, is a pure Gerund. Can someone explain to me how GMAT defines 'participle'?

btw, the correct answer is D and I don't have any issues with that.

Participles are ~ing words functioning as adjectives. There can be two type of participles... (1) present participle eg- helping, smiling etc (2) past participle eg: helped, smiled etc.
now we are talking about present participles..........

hence any word ending with ~ing which works as an adjective is a participle
eg- smiling boy.

any ~ing word that works as a noun is a gerund.
eg- smiling makes you look younger.

In this question excelling is used as an adjective for sports hence is a participle.

hope it helps...............

whatever happened to using the hypothetical subjunctive? I'm a bit confused about this. Source for this problem? OG10?

force5 wrote:
any ~ing word that works as a noun is a gerund.
eg- smiling makes you look younger.

In this question excelling is used as an adjective for sports hence is a participle.

Thanks for your reply. However, I am positive that 'excelling' is used as a 'gerund' here. You mention that 'smiling' is a gerund in the sentence below:

smiling makes you look younger.

I agree. How about this:

excelling at sports makes you look younger.

'Excelling' is used as a gerund here. 'excelling' is definitely not used as an 'adjective' for 'sports' here.

Following is an example of where 'excelling' is used as a participle (adjective):

All Excelling teams have one thing in common: Determination.

I would have to agree that excelling is used as a gerund here. Remember, the only things the OGs never get wrong is the answer. The explanations they give are quite sloppy however, and the OGs have had more than one error in explanations in the past.

What's the source of this question? Thanks.

chendawg wrote:
What's the source of this question?

OG Verbal Review 2nd edition. The explanation in OG is wrong which is one aspect. Actually I have specifically seen this aspect of gerunds and participles in multiple questions; hence, wanted to know if someone is more aware of what 'exactly' on GMAT Land is the difference between Particples and Gerunds (so I can align myself with whatever OG considers correct).

I feel where you're coming from. I would recommend asking lunarpower or Stacey Koprince by PM. I personally haven't really seen too many issues such as this, so any answer I give you would just be a guess. My best guess is that the GMAT probably views gerunds and participles in the correct sense, but in this case it just made an error. I could be wrong though!