MGMAT CAAT 2 - SC: surfing

[ahistegt]

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops among people in their common quest to conquer nature.
A. surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops
B. surfing’s appeal is its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops
C. surfing’s appeal to people is due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and developing camaraderie
D. surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, a backdrop that is unpredictable and that is, by turns, gracefully and serenely violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops
E. surfing appeals to people due to their unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops

[ahistegt]

Between A and D, I wrongly chose D on this. I think even A is not ideal here, as it uses multiple commas to separate distinct grammatical parts. For example, using semi colon to separate "the unusual confluence," "an unpredictable backdrop," and "the camaraderie" would be better.
How one can approach these type of questions during actual test? Is there an example of such question from retired tests or GMAT Prep?
Would appreciate some input. Thanks!

[vietnam01]

where is question from

"due to" is wrong because it is only used after verb of to be

all 5 choices are wrong,

I think we should focus on retired official quetions for effective study

[StaceyKoprince]

I agree that A is not ideal, but then so many correct OG answers on hard questions are not ideal either. That's what makes them hard - choosing the best of 5 options, not the ideal sentence, which may not exist in the answers. :)

The sentence offers a list of three things (I'll call them X, Y, and Z) and the Y item is the only difference between answer choices A and D.

(A) an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable

(D) a backdrop that is unpredictable and that is, by turns, gracefully and serenely violent and formidable

First, the original intent of the sentence was to describe the "backdrop" using four adjectives: graceful, serene, violent, and formidable. Answer choice D changes graceful and serene into adverbs (gracefully and serenely). Adverbs can't modify nouns, so these desciptive words can no longer be modifying the "backdrop." Instead, they are modifying the two other adjectives (violent and formidable). That's a problem.

Second, when we use the phrase "by turns," the intent is to show two contrasting states: sometimes it's this way and sometimes it's that way. The original sentence does this by first mentioning "graceful and serene" and then contrasting that with "violent and formidable." The two sets of adjectives are on equal footing and demonstrate the contrasting state. But when we look at the way the grammar was changed in the D, the "nice" adjectives were turned into adverbs, so they are no longer on equal footing with the "bad" adjectives, demonstrating two contrasting states. Instead, we have one state (gracefully and serenely violent and formidable) and somehow things are both bad and good at the same time.

There is some debate in the grammar community as to how to use "due to" correctly. In one OG question, OG states that "due to" is the wrong idiom and replaces it with "because of" but in another OG question, "due to" is used in the non-underlined portion of a sentence and that particular "due to" could have been replaced by "because of." So OG also appears to be a bit up in the air on this issue. Most modern grammar sources state that this "rule" (that you should not use "due to" when you mean "because of") is obsolete, but we can't dismiss the rule completely because of that conflicting message sent by OG.

So. I would say: if you see a split between "due to" and "because of," and you're not sure what else to do, then choose a "because of" option. And if you see a sentence that uses "due to" but doesn't offer "because of" as an alternative... then ignore that and look for something else.

[priyankur.saha]

Thanks Stacey for nice explanations. Today I also went for D on test.

[JonathanSchneider]

: )