Children's tendency to be more susceptible to bronchitis and asthma

Children tend to be more susceptible than adults to bronchitis and asthma is possibly because, according to recent research, children retain 35 percent more of inhaled airborne particles on the surface of their lungs than adults do.

Correct answer must be (E) for the highlighted errors in other options...



Done that, Thanks for pointing out...

E. Children tend to be more susceptible than adults [tend to be] to bronchitis and asthma

A beautiful post from E-Gmat on verb omission https://e-gmat.com/blog/gmat-verbal/sen ... -sentences

Exactly, is the comma at the end of E correct?

A ,B Wrong comparison
C Which is wrongly used
D , are so no meaningful

E is as explained always a better choice and coincise

comparison on gmat is never easy. it makes us trouble.
the point is the comparison must be between the logic things. we need a logic comparison. one way to find logic comparison is parallelism. parallelism helps us find the compared elements and check whether compared elements are logically compared.

but we do not need perfect parallelism to make comparison logic. some official answer on og or gmatprep contain no perfect comparison but as long as the elements compared are logic , the sentence is fine.

so, the main point is that using parallelism to find the 2 elements compared. the main point is not that we find a parallelism. our purpose is to find the element compared grammatically and check weather they are logically compared logically.

using parallelism to find grammatical role of each compared element. each compared element must have the same grammatical role in its clause. if grammatical roles are different , we find a mistake.

look at choice A.

look for parallelism and grammatical roles of "children's " and "adult". they are not parallel and grammatical role of "adult" and "children's" are different. we find a mistake

children's tendency should be compared with adults's tendency, not adults

choice A is gone.

choice B should be " as is the case with adults' tendency"

Hi,

Request the experts to help me understand if the comma at the end of the answer choice E is correct?

If that is so my analysis says that I am joining two sentences using "Possibly" - will that be correct?

Thanks in advance!
Shubham

Hi ShubhamRastogi, two sentences are not being joined by possibly.

The construct is:

i) Children tend to be more susceptible than adults to bronchitis and asthma- Independent clause

ii) because children retain 35 percent more....: Dependent clause, acting as an adverbial clause (adverbial, since this clause answers the question why? - Why do children tend to be more susceptible than adults to bronchitis & asthma)

The word possibly is again an adverb, just modifying the above adverbial clause (adverbs can modify adverbs as well:)).

You can watch our video on Independent and Dependent Clauses.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Independent and Dependent Clauses, their application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

need help to understand parallel structure in comparison

(E) Children tend to be more susceptible than adults to bronchitis and asthma,

X more susceptible than Y

X: children (noun) tend ( verb)

Y: adults ( if i assume verb is implied, it will be ' than adults tend to be to P&Q''

Yep! This is what it is!

Following two clauses are being compared:

- Children tend to be more susceptible to bronchitis and asthma

- Adults tend to be less susceptible to bronchitis and asthma

,

Hello himanshu0123,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, your understanding of the parallel structure in Option E is, indeed, correct.

Kudos.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Do you understand that all three of these comparison sentences are correctly written?:
I read more than my brother does.
I usually read more than my brother does.
I tend to read more than my brother does.

The easiest way to process "tend to VERB" is to treat it like "usually VERB", because you can substitute one of those two for the other in general.

In the B option is - is the case refer to tendency here?
What is the reason for B option to be wrong?

Hello nikitathegreat,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, Option B is incorrect because it incorrectly compares "tendency" to "is the case"; remember, a comparison can only be made between similar things.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hi ,

shouldn't there be "do" also there in option E. Like

Children tend to be more susceptible than adults do to bronchitis and asthma,

Will it change the meaning or impact the sentence any way?

"adults do to bronchitis and asthma" doesn't look like a great construct; nevertheless let's wait for other responses on this.

In any case, it is important that you get comfortable with this construct because GMAT uses it extensively in comparison sentences.

Another similar example:

Plants are more efficient than fungi at acquiring carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, and converting it to energy-rich sugars.
- Again, notice that "are" (...than fungi are..) is implied.

Hello EtaCarnia,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, when a comparison is drawn between actions, repeated verbs can be omitted for the sake of conciceness, without replacing them with stand-ins such as "do" or "are".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

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