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555-605 (Medium)|   Idioms/Diction/Redundancy|   Parallelism|                                 
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AndrewN
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 31 Aug 2020, 09:15
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aritrar4
A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make sense of speech.


(A) it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make

(B) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, to make

(C) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, the result of this, they are unable to make

(D) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and results in not making

(E) as to hamper the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words, resulting in being unable to make

sayantanc2k daagh AndrewN - could you please help me with a doubt?

I was evaluating choices B,C and D (eliminated A and E for unidiomatic usage) and was confused by the comma after "and" in options B and C. Should the comma not have been before "and" (distinguish discrete sounds and words, and as a result, to make)? Is it trivial compared to the parallelism that B maintains, which makes it the correct choice? Thanks for your help !
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Hello, aritrar4. You pose a fair question, one that DmitryFarber has touched on indirectly in his post above. In choice (B), the phrase as a result is simply acting as an interrupter or, if you prefer, a parenthetical aside. Whenever you encounter such interrupters, you can remove them from the sentence to see whether the grammar and meaning would still check out. Examining (B), we would get,

A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, to make sense of speech.

This makes sense. The noun ability presents parallel elements in the infinitives that follow, [ability] to distinguish and [ability] to make. A comma before and would be inappropriate.

Meanwhile, choice (C) should include a comma before the conjunction, since what follows the interrupter (nonsensical as it may be) is an independent clause. The correctly punctuated version would read,

that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and, the result of this, they are unable to make

It is really the result of this that derails the answer choice, but (C) also adds nothing in the way of clarity by introducing they and a second independent clause. Choice (B) is a clear winner.

I hope that helps. Thank you for calling my attention to the question.

- Andrew
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 23 Dec 2020, 14:08
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https://gmatclub.com/forum/with-governm ... 24695.html


In the official question referenced above, optin C, D , and E have been rejected as unidiomatic "ability of" and in this Official question all options have ability of.

Can someone please point out the correct idiomatic usage of ability ???
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 24 Jan 2021, 05:43
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I ended up in choosing D after POE of B&D because:

Conversational pace does 2 things.
- hampers the ability of Children
- results in not making sense of Speech.

I assumed these 2 are Parallel instead because ''not making sense'' is the result of preceding sentence ''it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words''.

Or Probably 'that' missing in front of 'results in not making' is an indicator that it is not parallel to 'hampers'?
If we need to make these sentences parallel, Is 'that' mandatory before 'results in not making' (Although meaningfully doesnt make sense)

Did I Misunderstood the sentence ? Can someone help?
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 24 Jan 2021, 11:32
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Bharadwaj176
I ended up in choosing D after POE of B&D because:

Conversational pace does 2 things.
- hampers the ability of Children
- results in not making sense of Speech.

I assumed these 2 are Parallel instead because ''not making sense'' is the result of preceding sentence ''it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words''.

Or Probably 'that' missing in front of 'results in not making' is an indicator that it is not parallel to 'hampers'?
If we need to make these sentences parallel, Is 'that' mandatory before 'results in not making' (Although meaningfully doesnt make sense)

Did I Misunderstood the sentence ? Can someone help?
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Hi Bharadwaj176, following doesn't make much sense, does it?

"conversational pace results in not making sense of speech".

At the very least it should be:

"conversational pace results in some children not making sense of speech".
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 04 May 2021, 16:23
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make sense of speech.


(A) it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make "that" is required. sentence is also not parallel

(B) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, to make meaning makes sense, sentence is parallel "to distinguish...and...to make"

(C) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, the result of this, they are unable to make not parallel

(D) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and results in not making sentence is not parallel

(E) as to hamper the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words, resulting in being unable to make"brisk as to hamper" is not idiomatic
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 14 Jun 2021, 10:04
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make sense of speech.

(A) it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make

(B) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, to make

(C) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, the result of this, they are unable to make

(D) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and results in not making

(E) as to hamper the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words, resulting in being unable to make

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Simplified version: A new study suggests that XYZ may be so brisk that it hampers ABC and, as a result, PQR.

(A) it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make

(B) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, to make - :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

(C) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, the result of this, they are unable to make

(D) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and results in not making

(E) as to hamper the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words, resulting in being unable to make
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 16 Aug 2021, 10:41
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Hi @e-GMAT team,

Wanted to check on the usage of THAT here in option B as a connector. As i understand THAT when used as a connector is optional. Excluding it from a sentence should not be considered as a deterministic error. Can you confirm ? Thanks a lot.
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 28 Dec 2021, 06:24
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make sense of speech.

We look for the two point of error:
1)So brisk requires the parallel structure so X that Y
2)"it hampers the ability of some children" carries over to the other part of the structure and must make sense

(A) it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, it hampers the ability of some children to make

(B) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, it hampers the ability of some children to make

(C) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, the result of this, it hampers the ability of some children they are unable to make

(D) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and it hampers the ability of some children results in not making

(E) as to hamper the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words, resulting in being unable to make
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 14 Aug 2022, 15:25
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So let me get this clear. in this question since we had the marker "so brisk that", "the ability to..." becomes the main noun and we try to make the two infinitives "to distinguish" and "to result" parallel?

and in another case where the "so brisk that" didnt exist in the question we would for choice D. for example
"A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words , and results in not making sense of speech."
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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 16 Aug 2022, 22:42
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AhmedMoharam89
AjiteshArun

ParamjitDasGMAT

Can we deconstruct the question here?

The open marker is "and" so we have 2 elements here. the elements maybe "hampers and results" or "to distinguish and to make".

what does it refer to? IMO, the only logical antecedent is " the conversational pace" because it can't mean the "study" or "day".
so if we rephrase: (A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk that the conversational pace of everyday life hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, to make sense of speech.)

OR

(A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk that the conversational pace of everyday life hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and and results in not making sense of speech).

Even though, I have placed both sentences now, I can't see why Option D is still incorrect. I.e what is wrong in saying that a certain action "results" in something?

in such type of problems, how do I correctly identify The Root Phrase

I hope by this way you understand my point of weakness in this type of scenarios and address me how to rectify it.

Thanks
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There is nothing wrong in saying that a certain ACTION results in something (an outcome). The only problem? The "conversational pace of.." cannot really be thought of as an action. Which also further illustrates my idea in the first answer that the two verbs shouldn't be placed in parallel in this case (false parallelism).

Hope this helps

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A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may 18 Aug 2023, 10:55
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