Even within the same study, people responded quite differently to

Easy to check for parallelism.

a)some showing increased flexibility ( PHRASE), while (PARALLEL MARKER) others did not.(CLAUSE)

b)with some showing increased flexibility,(PHRASE) while (PARALLEL MARKER) others did not.(CLAUSE)

c) with some showing an increase in flexibility (PHRASE) and (PARALLEL MARKER)others did not.(CLAUSE)

d)some showing an increase in flexibility (PHRASE), while (PARALLEL MARKER) others not.(PHRASE)

We expect a complete clause after while but even that will not make it parallel.Incorrect use of while in D makes it wrong.

e)with some showing increased flexibility(PHRASE) and(PARALLEL MARKER) others not.(PHRASE)

So,E is preferable.

rukna

The group of words after "While" is not a clause - Clause requires sub and verb. "Showing" is not a verb as it is not preceded by is, am,are etc.

I am confused between B and E. Why is B wrong?

Even within the same study, people responded quite differently to acupuncture, some showing increased flexibility, while others did not.

B) with some showing increased flexibility, while others did not.

E) with some showing increased flexibility and others not.

Hi,
Since there is no verb in the first phrase before , 'did not' doesn't refer to a verb , making the construction nonparallel . 'while' is used to join clauses whereas modifier before comma is a phrase. Therefore, to maintain parallelism we need a phrase after 'and'.

Your query has been very well explained above by anje29 - closing the expert request.

"With" is used to introduce a prepositional phrase modifier.Prepositional phrase modifiers can be used in 2 ways:
1. Noun modifier: Chicken with rice is my favorite food.
2. Verb modifier: I cannot repair this table, at least with this tool.

MartyMurray , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert

A,B and C are easy to eliminate. Why is choice E preferred over D?? Both seem very similar

From the above explanations, "increased flexibility" seems to be preferred over "increase in flexibility". I don't understand why?

Hi Prateek176!

Happy to help You're right that they are very similar!

The problem with D is not "increase in flexibility", it is "while". "While" is a subordinating conjunction, so it needs to be followed by a clause (subject + verb). Here, we have "while others not", which is not a complete clause, since there is no verb. If we don't have a complete clause, then we need to use a coordinating conjunction ("and", "but", "yet", "for", "so"...) instead. Since E uses "and", which is a coordinating conjunction and so does not need to be followed by a clause, it is correct

Hope that helps!
-Carolyn

D) some showing an increase in flexibility, while others not.

There is an issue with "increase in flexibility" in D.

"some" is plural".

"an increase in flexibility" is singular.

So, if read literally, D conveys that multiple people, "some", showed ONE increase in flexibility, as if a bunch of people shared this one increase in flexibility.

To make sense, D would have to use the plural "increases" and say, "some showing increases in flexibility".

E) with some showing increased flexibility and others not.

In E, this issue is avoided, as "increased flexibility" is not countable. So, there is no plural version, and thus, "increased flexibility" is fine with "some".

Also, the meaning conveyed by "increased flexibility" is probably a bit more appropriate than the meaning conveyed by "an increase in flexibility". I doubt that the speaker means to convey that some people showed "an increase", in other words, "one increase", in flexibility. Probably the point is that with acupuncture, maybe multiple treatments, people showed "increased flexibility".

ankurgupta03

Could you please elaborate why is "with" required?

Thanks MartyMurray for clarifying the precise reason of difference b\w last two answer choices.
The actual problem is NOT the usage of "with" or "and/while", but the subject-verb agreement.

Hi Experts egmat , GMATNinja
Could you please explain why the usage of didn't is not correct. Although I have gone through the relevant explanations, but still couldn't figure it out.

Even within the same study, people responded quite differently to acupuncture, some showing increased flexibility, while others did not.

(A) some showing increased flexibility, while others did not

(B) with some showing increased flexibility, while others did not

(C) with some showing an increase in flexibility and others did not

(D) some showing an increase in flexibility, while others not

(E) with some showing increased flexibility and others not


Imo E

This question is very tough. It test many concepts of grammar - namely comparison, parallelism and sentence structure

1) Note that even is present in the non underlined part of the sentence so we have to have contrast sentence and a full clause with its subject and verb will come.
2) Two entities in comparison must be parallel and should make sense.


A some showing increased flexibility, some showing increased flexibility, while others did not highlighted clause is not parallel as different verb forms are used. Second is a full clause with its subject and verb while "some showing increased flexibility" is not a full clause rather is noun modifier. So drop this choice.

B Same problem as A. Parallelism is not correct

C Parallelism is incorrect same as A

D This one is the most difficult to eliminate. while is a subordinating conjunction so a clause will be correct but we do not have a complete clause after while so drop this choice.

E is correct while is replaced by "and" and parallelism is proper

Till now I have learned that [With][noun][gerund] structure is not acceptable in GMAT, but here the correct answer has this structure. Would you able to throw some light on this?

Tamalmallick13 First, not all -ing words are gerunds. A gerund is an -ing word used as a noun, and "showing" is not a noun here. Rather, it's a present participle serving to modify "some." Using -ing words to modify nouns in this way is quite common:

I ran down the street, with my dog running behind me.
People living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

I'm also curious where you saw this purported rule. Do you have a link? Maybe one of us can shed light on the original problem where you saw this.

Thank you for clearing my doubt.