Although they always liked playing with toy helicopters while being

Yes, not happy with the placement of "as children". It does make the sentence awkward.
But the other options are certainly worse.
In (A), they were not "being" children, not acting like children. They were children.
"while in childhood" and "at the time of their childhood" are both incorrect. Children are not "in" childhood. Childhood is a time period.
Also, since childhood is a time period, it is not a point in time. So use of "at the time" is not correct. The correct usage would be "during childhood".

Must be (E) for the highlighted errors in other options....
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Although they always liked playing with toy helicopters while being children, the Wright brothers became seriously interested in aeronautics after hearing about Samuel Langley’s unmanned steam-powered model aircraft.

A. while being children
Usage of WHILE leads to Redundancy. Hence Incorrect.
B. while in childhood
Usage of WHILE leads to Redundancy. Hence Incorrect.
C. at the time of their childhood
Usage of AT THE TIME leads to Redundancy. Hence Incorrect.
D. as being in childhood
E. as children
CORRECT

I think the answer E is grammatically correct but it violated the meaning rule.
"As" is used to make the comparison between "Wright brothers" with "children", but the meaning of the sentence is:
Although they always liked playing with toy helicopters when they were children,....
So, I chose C although it is wordy a bit.
Experts, please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks

Hi chetan2u Gladiator59 VeritasKarishma

With toy helicopters as children means that helicopters were playing the role or function of being "a child". Can this be the OA. This dose not convey the intended meaning.
Please guide



Regards
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Wouldn't the official answer imply that helicopters acted as children?

Although they always liked playing with toy helicopters as children, the Wright brothers became seriously interested in aeronautics after hearing about Samuel Langley’s unmanned steam-powered model aircraft.

The highlighted part must modify whatever comes after it, in this case it is the Wright brothers....

Going by the meaning of the sentence it states that -

Although they (the Wright brothers) always liked playing with toy helicopters as children, the Wright brothers became seriously interested in aeronautics after hearing about Samuel Langley’s unmanned steam-powered model aircraft.

Nonw read the intended meaning of the sentence is : Wright brothers always liked playing with toy helicopters as children

Hope this helps....
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I picked E thinking it is less wordy but slightly unclear why “while” can’t be used as in answer A

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I think this is a very confusing grammatical structure. It is not clear what the sentence wants to convey. Most of us know Wright brothers and hence, it is not difficult to fathom the intended meaning but I guess the grammatical structure could have been better. Does the sentence wants to convey that:

a) "Wright brothers liked playing with a helicopter LIKE children" - acting as children AND now they don't
b) "Although they always liked playing with toy helicopters WHEN they were children, the Wright brothers became seriously ....."

My biggest conundrum is understanding "as noun" usage. What I know is that "as" is a subordinate conjunction (see this post from Magoosh) and requires full noun and verb in its structure.

Few idioms that I know around "as" are
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-sent ... ike-vs-as/
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/a-tricky- ... vs-act-as/
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-idioms-involving-as/

Can you please help me understand where exactly this usage of "as" fits? Any reference from legitimate source will be helpful.

EXPERTS!!!!

In Option E,

I am more concerned about the placement of "as children".
Had it been placed, for ex - Although they as children always liked playing with toy helicopters,.... - it would have made more sense to use "as".

But here, isn't it creating confusion by modifying toy helicopters also, by sitting right after it?

Thank you so much VeritasKarishma for clarifying my doubt. The point is not that option E is the perfect answer, but the point is that option E is the least worst among all of the five answer choices.

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