Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing is appealing

Between A and D there is a slight change in meaning in D.

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

Here gracefully and serenly are modifying violent and formidable.
In the original sentence this is not the case.

Official explanation

This sentence contains three parallel elements: “because of the unusual confluence...,” “because of an unpredictable backdrop...,” and “because of the camaraderie....” Additionally, the introductory modifying phrase “originally developed by ancient Hawaiians” correctly modifies the noun “surfing.” The sentence does use an unusual construction in the second parallel element: "by turns graceful and labored, serene and violent." The idiom "by turns" typically indicates a set of contrasting events or characteristics. Each pair provides two contrasting words: graceful with labored, serene with violent. When using this idiom, the two pairs can be matched together rather than presented as a 4-item list.

(A) CORRECT. This choice properly follows rules of parallel construction and uses the introductory phrase to correctly modify the noun “surfing.”

(B) The introductory modifying phrase “originally developed by ancient Hawaiians” incorrectly describes “surfing’s appeal” rather than surfing itself. In addition, "surfing's appeal is..." is not a literally true statement; it's incorrect to say that these three things ARE surfing's appeal. Rather, they create or cause that appeal, as expressed in the correct answer.

(C) The introductory modifying phrase “originally developed by ancient Hawaiians” incorrectly describes “surfing’s appeal” rather than surfing itself. Furthermore, the third element of the sentence, “developing camaraderie among people,” is not parallel to the first two elements.

(D) This choice alters the original meaning by stating “a backdrop that is unpredictable and that is, by turns, gracefully and serenely labored and violent.” Additionally, this choice incorrectly changes the adjectives “graceful” and “serene” to adverbs “gracefully” and “serenely”; thus, the adverbs incorrectly modify the adjectives “labored” and “violent” rather than the noun “backdrop.” Furthermore, the third element of the sentence, “developing camaraderie among people,” is not parallel to the first two elements.

(E) The first part of the sentence contains "because of having...", which is unidiomatic: "because of" must be followed by a noun. In addition, "appeals to them" seems to indicate that surfing appeals to the ancient Hawaiians, a claim that makes no sense because the sentence is written in the present.

Shouldn't the correct sentence read because of an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and labored [b]and serene and violent[/b] since graceful and labored and serene and violent is defining how unpredictable the backdrop is?

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing is appealing because of its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high-paced maneuvering, because of an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and labored, serene and violent, and because of the camaraderie that often develops among people in their common quest to conquer nature.

All that the author is trying to say here is that surfing is appealing because of a bunch of reasons - because of (1), because of (2) and because of (3). The original construction of the sentence conveys it pretty well. Hence (A)

(b) surfing’s appeal is its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high-paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is by turns graceful and labored, serene and violent, and the camaraderie that often develops - 'Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians', which is the introductory modifier, is meant to modify 'surfing' and not 'surfing's appeal'. Based on this we can reject option (B)

(c) surfing’s appeal to people is because of its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high-paced maneuvering, because of an unpredictable backdrop that is by turns graceful and labored, serene and violent, and developing camaraderie - This repeats the same error as (B)

(d) surfing is appealing because of its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high-paced maneuvering, because of a backdrop that is unpredictable and that is by turns gracefully and serenely labored and violent, and the camaraderie that often develops - 'a backdrop that is unpredictable' is a long phrase. Instead, a better version is 'an unpredictable backdrop'. Additionally 'an unpredictable backdrop is by turns A and B, C and D,' not 'a backdrop is by turns A, B+C and D.
where A = graceful, B = labored, C = serene and D = violent
Reject

(e) surfing appeals to them because of having an unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high-paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is by turns graceful and labored, serene and violent, and the camaraderie that often develops - Not clear as to who/what is having an unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill and high-paced maneuvering - Is it the ancient Hawaiians or the surfing? - Reject

Can someone please explain the part --- The sentence does use an unusual construction in the second parallel element: "by turns graceful and labored, serene and violent." The idiom "by turns" typically indicates a set of contrasting events or characteristics. Each pair provides two contrasting words: graceful with labored, serene with violent. When using this idiom, the two pairs can be matched together rather than presented as a 4-item list. ?
I thought these 4 are lists but not parallel.
I thought it would be - graceful with laboured and serene with violent.

Posted from my mobile device

Hi Experts,

In Option A, wont there be an "AND" between "graceful and labored", "Serene and violent".

Thanks

Hello KittyDoodles,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, a pair of adverbs of adjectives that refer to the same subject can be joined by just a comma, rather than a conjunction.

In this case, both pairs - "graceful and labored" and "Serene and violent" - function as one modifier each, as the intended meaning is to exemplify how surfing possesses contradictory characteristics.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team