Bunuel wrote:
An American rap music fan preferred paying a $150 fine rather than listen to classical music for 20 hours.
A. rather than listen
B. rather than to listen
C. rather than listening
D. instead of listen
E. instead of to listen
Official Explanation
(A) This answer choice is
grammatically incorrect. The construction
A rather than B requires that A and B belong to the same part of speech. If A and B are
unconjugated verbs, they should be of the same type. Paying is
Verb+ing whereas listen is not.
What helps us identify this question as a
Parallelism question as well as identify the mistake is the following
Stop Sign:
A rather than B(B) This answer choice
repeats the original mistake. The construction A rather than B requires that A and B belong to the same part of speech. If A and B are unconjugated verbs, they should be of the same type. Paying is
Verb+ing whereas to listen is To Verb.
(C) This answer choice
correctly uses the construction A rather than B. A and B parallel each other as they are both
unconjugated verbs of the same type
(Verb+ing). (D) This answer choice is
grammatically incorrect. The construction A instead of B requires that A and B belong to the same part of speech. If A and B are
unconjugated verbs, they should be of the same type.
Paying is
Verb+ing whereas
listen is not.
In addition, this answer choice makes the unnecessary change of replacing rather than with instead of.
(E) Same as D
Answer: C