(A) beating in unison and adopting
(B) they beat in unison while adopting
(C) beat in unison, and adopt
(D) beating in unison yet adopting
(E) even though they beat in unison and adopt
a couple of comments:
* you said 'the correct answer'. is (a) actually the official answer? i think (d) is the better choice, for the reasons outlined below. actually i like choice (f), my own version (see the end of this post), but (d) is the best of the choices given here.
is this a real gmatprep problem? if so, i'm surprised the writers didn't compose a correct answer closer to the one i've labeled (f) below.
--
(a)
parallelism & mechanics are ok, making this the second-best of the choices here, but this one misses the point: the cells beat in unison, but they adopt orientations exclusive of one another. these facts are diametrically opposed to one another: the first talks about cooperative action, the second about completely independent action. that's a striking contrast, one that certainly deserves a CONTRAST TRANSITION such as 'but', 'yet', 'although', etc.
not 'and'.
(b)
two ways to view the grammar here; either way it's wrong:
- poor parallelism (your interpretation)
- comma splice: you have an independent clause (i.e., something that could be a standalone sentence by itself), then a comma, then another independent clause. that's not allowed.
note that this choice would produce a perfectly good sentence if the comma were replaced with a semicolon.
also note that 'while' is an acceptable CONTRAST TRANSITION, although good transitions don't rescue a choice with bad grammar.
(c)
i see your point about the singular 'feature' referring to 3 different parallel components, but i don't think that's the issue here (one could conceive of the 3 different actions described as a single feature, if they're related closely enough). but that argument is moot, as this choice suffers from the same problem as (a): no CONTRAST TRANSITION to convey the intended meaning effectively.
(d)
all the grammatical advantages of choice (a), but with a proper CONTRAST TRANSITION. this one gets the thumbs up from me.
(e)
this isn't nonparallel, but the CONTRAST TRANSITION is in the wrong place: it's placed between 'adhere to one another' and 'beat in unison'. that's not the right contrast; the correct contrast is between the beating in unison (cooperative action) and adopting specialized orientations (individual action).
* you said 'the correct answer'. is (a) actually the official answer? i think (d) is the better choice, for the reasons outlined below. actually i like choice (f), my own version (see the end of this post), but (d) is the best of the choices given here.
is this a real gmatprep problem? if so, i'm surprised the writers didn't compose a correct answer closer to the one i've labeled (f) below.
--
(a)
parallelism & mechanics are ok, making this the second-best of the choices here, but this one misses the point: the cells beat in unison, but they adopt orientations exclusive of one another. these facts are diametrically opposed to one another: the first talks about cooperative action, the second about completely independent action. that's a striking contrast, one that certainly deserves a CONTRAST TRANSITION such as 'but', 'yet', 'although', etc.
not 'and'.
(b)
two ways to view the grammar here; either way it's wrong:
- poor parallelism (your interpretation)
- comma splice: you have an independent clause (i.e., something that could be a standalone sentence by itself), then a comma, then another independent clause. that's not allowed.
note that this choice would produce a perfectly good sentence if the comma were replaced with a semicolon.
also note that 'while' is an acceptable CONTRAST TRANSITION, although good transitions don't rescue a choice with bad grammar.
(c)
i see your point about the singular 'feature' referring to 3 different parallel components, but i don't think that's the issue here (one could conceive of the 3 different actions described as a single feature, if they're related closely enough). but that argument is moot, as this choice suffers from the same problem as (a): no CONTRAST TRANSITION to convey the intended meaning effectively.
(d)
all the grammatical advantages of choice (a), but with a proper CONTRAST TRANSITION. this one gets the thumbs up from me.
(e)
this isn't nonparallel, but the CONTRAST TRANSITION is in the wrong place: it's placed between 'adhere to one another' and 'beat in unison'. that's not the right contrast; the correct contrast is between the beating in unison (cooperative action) and adopting specialized orientations (individual action).
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