{"id":10818,"date":"2012-04-03T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=10818"},"modified":"2012-03-30T17:01:38","modified_gmt":"2012-03-31T00:01:38","slug":"gmat-idiom-quiz-do-you-know-your-prepositions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/gmat-idiom-quiz-do-you-know-your-prepositions\/","title":{"rendered":"GMAT Idiom Quiz: Do You Know Your Prepositions?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"You know your idioms, right? You\u2019ve studied a list<\/a>\u2014indeed you\u2019ve veritably pored over it (not pored through it!)\u2014so you can distinguish, with the unerring eye of a seasoned grammarian, the nuances of (or was that in?) idiom usage. Then, in the midst of a question and a flurry of words, you blank out.<\/p>\n

It is what I call list lull\u2014the tendency for your brain to be lulled to sleep by an seemingly endless series of words followed (or not followed) by a preposition, and for you to be lulled by the false complacency that you have learned the proper idiomatic construction. For when you open the Official Guide, you are suddenly stymied, was it attributed to or attributed in?<\/em> (It\u2019s the latter).<\/p>\n

To see if you truly know your idioms, I\u2019ve concocted a nasty little quiz. Below are four sentences, each containing several idioms. You have to choose which idiom of the two (or three) is correct. Sometimes neither will be correct. Other times both will be correct.<\/p>\n

Donning my math hat: If a sentence tests four idioms, and there are four different possibilities, the chances of guessing correctly are 1 in 256. So if you can answer all five correctly\u2026well, you have a knack for (not towards!) idioms. Good luck!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1. The government\u00a0decreed\/decreed that <\/span><\/strong>anyone who dared to break\/breaking<\/span><\/strong> the curfew be held accountable on\/for<\/span><\/strong> their disregard of\/disregarding<\/span><\/strong> the law.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. Attributing the unprecedented drought to\/towards<\/span><\/strong> changes in the solar cycle, the\u00a0research team failed to account for \/take account of <\/span><\/strong>the influence of any\u00a0terrestrial culprits, namely our destruction in\/of<\/span><\/strong> rainforests and our unbridled\u00a0consumption\u00a0in\/of<\/span><\/strong> gasoline.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. Prone in\/to<\/span><\/strong> mistaking natural childhood impulsivity as\/for<\/span><\/strong> attention deficit\u00a0disorder (ADD), childhood psychologists are notorious in\/for<\/span><\/strong> overmedicating\u00a0children, creating a lifelong dependency on\/towards<\/span><\/strong> certain medications.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. To cite\/citing <\/span><\/strong>the proliferation of smart phones as one of the chief causes <\/span><\/strong>of\/causes for<\/span><\/strong> student inattention, many high schools are cracking down on\/upon <\/span><\/strong>the\u00a0use of\/use in<\/span><\/strong> handheld devices by requiring that\/requiring<\/span><\/strong> students to submit\/submit to<\/span><\/strong> a metal detection test.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Answers:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0decreed that, both, for, disregard of<\/p>\n

2. to, account for, of, of<\/p>\n

3. to, for, for, on<\/p>\n

4. Citing, both, on, use of, requiring, submit to<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This post was written by Chris Lele, GMAT Expert at Magoosh<\/a>, and originally published here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know your idioms, right? You\u2019ve studied a list\u2014indeed you\u2019ve veritably pored over it (not pored through it!)\u2014so you can distinguish, with the unerring eye of a seasoned grammarian, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,783,243,719,735],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-magoosh-blog","category-blog","category-sentence-correction-gmat","category-verbal-gmat-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10818"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10822,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818\/revisions\/10822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}