Test administrators refuse to give permission to contestants

OA is D.

Here is the OE:

(A) contains unnecessary wordiness and a pronoun that causes ambiguity. To give permission to should appear as to permit, and while "they participate" must change in order to clarify whether administrators or contestants are doing the participating.

(B) and (E) are incorrect answers because they fail to simplify the long-winded phrase to give permission.

(C) fails to replace the
ambiguous pronoun.

IMO D. D is concise. 'to give permission' replaced by ' to permit' and ambiguity of 'they' is removed. 'Participate' is not required as this in context with the contestants only. Contestants.. participate.

~
Sony

I was stuck between (C) and (D).

Picked (C) because i thought "they" refers back to "contestants"

I want to know if "contestants" and "participate" are redundant. or the ambiguity of "they" is the only reason to drop option (C).

I went with D, because of unclear antecedent for 'they.'

Hey All,

Look like there was enough confusion about this one that it would be worth my taking a look. Let's see...


Test administrators refuse to give permission to contestants to listen to music while they participate in standardized testing or chess tournaments.

A to give permission to contestants to listen to music while they participate in
PROBLEM: Technically, the first 10 words of this answer choice are correct, but whenever you see the word "to" used 4 TIMES in 8 words, you might wonder if there's a less wordy answer choice. However, as a few people have pointed out, "they" has an ambiguous antecedent (it could be "administrators" or "contestants") so this is wrong. That is the only major grammatical issue here, as both the opening part and the "participate in" issues are related to concision, which is a relative issue.


B to give permission for contestants to listen to music while they participate in
PROBLEM: Idiom. You give permission "to" do something, not "for" something. Remember, changes in prepositions in the splits (choosing between "to" and "for") generally signals an idiom issue. Be on the lookout!

C to permit contestants to listen to music while they participate
PROBLEM: Pronoun ambiguity again. Also you need an "in" after participate (again the choice between the preposition "in" and no preposition signals idiom issues).


D to permit contestants to listen to music during
ANSWER: People could argue that the meaning has changed slightly here, and I would agree. What if the contestants aren't technically participating in the contests, but just sitting around? Luckily, all the other answer choices have serious grammatical issues (other than concision), so the meaning shift is immaterial.

E to give permission for music during
PROBLEM: Idiom "for" again. Also, where did the contestants go?

Hope that helps!

-tommy

One question here regarding D: "during" is not supposed to refer ONLY to specific periods of time??
Thanks.

Thanks Tommy for clarifying. I chose D as well.

And what do you think about the "during"?

Hey Noburu,

I kinda addressed that, though I didn't explain it very well. The "during" is fine, but it changes the meaning. We want them to be participating, not just sitting around watching.

-t