shubhamsharma997 wrote:
Can some expert please throw some light on this? Though the difficulty is 5%, the question is actually tough when trying to eliminate answer choices.
It's worth noting that this is a very old question, so I wouldn't stress over it too much. That said, let's give it a shot.
(B) is probably the easiest to eliminate:
- Notice that we have an independent clause after the comma + "but": "persistent terrorist activity has had a chilling effect too." So it seems like we're saying something like "the travel industry is suffering because of X and Y... on the contrary, persistent terrorist activity has had a chilling effect too." The "but" doesn't make any sense because there's no contrast between the two clauses.
- Even if the "but" were appropriate, we'd need an "and" between "sluggish economy" and "a stretch of bad weather" to finish that parallel list before starting the next independent clause.
- We're trying to list three distinct causes of the suffering, so we want "as a result of X, Y, and Z," not "as a result of X, Y, but Z."
That brings us to (A) and (E):
- There's no reason to use "as well as" instead of a simple "and" to link the three reasons why the travel industry is suffering. Maybe if we wanted to emphasize the first two and mention the third as a side note we could do something like, "as a result of sluggish economy and a stretch of bad weather, as well as the chilling effects...," but we don't have an option like that.
- There's also no good reason to use "terrorist activity that is persistent" or "terrorist activity that persists" instead of the much simpler, "persistent terrorist activity." In addition to being unnecessarily wordy, the first two almost make it sound like we're talking about specific terrorist activity that is actively doing something. On the other hand, "persistent terrorist activity" is more succinct and also seems a bit more appropriate since we're talking about terrorist activity in general.
- That gives us two votes against (A) and (E).
So we're down to (B) and (D), which are very similar:
- We have "persistent terrorist activity" in (D) and "terrorist activity that is persistent" in (B) -- as discussed above, "persistent terrorist activity" is a bit better.
- I also like the plural "chilling effects" instead of "chilling effect" -- the plural suggests that the terrorist activity has had a broad range of effects, not just one singular effect, and that makes sense given the complexity of the issue.
Does that make (B) WRONG in a vacuum? Maybe not, but with a couple of small votes against (B), we're left with (D) as our winner.
I hope that helps!