Throughout the Southwestern United States, maguey, or American aloe

Question

Throughout the Southwestern United States, maguey, or American aloe, shrubs are widely cultivated because  they are popular ornamental plants, their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic  to prevent skin infections.

A. they are popular ornamental plants, their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic

B. they are popular ornamental plants, and their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic

C. they are popular ornamental plants, and their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, and their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic

D. just as they are popular ornamental plants, their leaf fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, as well as soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic

E. they are popular ornamental plants, leaf-fibers as raw material for rope, nectar for making sugar, and soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic

AndrewN · Accepted Answer

I am not sure about the difference between answer choices (A) and (B) here—the use of an extra and—whether that is a fair call for a test-taker to have to make. The former sentence forces an interpretation that aloe is widely cultivated for four reasons, but the latter sentence is equally valid, simply providing the reader one (perhaps primary) reason that the plant is widely cultivated while adding three other pieces of information about the plant as a second independent clause, information that may or may not provide further reasons for wide cultivation. We cannot point to because just prior to the underlined portion to argue that all items in the list need to follow this cue, since, again, the reason can resolve with a second, loosely related independent clause to follow. I am an advocate of using meaning to determine what kind of sentence to pursue in an answer choice, but this question does not provide enough guidance to steer us toward a single best option, in my view. (I respect that others may hold different opinions.)

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

ThatDudeKnows · Answer

Great post,  AndrewN !

My advice is that, any time there is a difference in meaning between two answer choices, give more weight to the meaning conveyed by the sentence as written. Twenty years ago, GMAC mentioned this explicitly, though I don't think I've seen it published in their more recent materials. If you want something else to go by on this one, it seems that the three "other pieces of information" are all arguments for the plant's cultivation, not  just  pieces of information.

Okay, so let's dive in.

Throughout the Southwestern United States, maguey, or American aloe, shrubs are widely cultivated because  they are popular ornamental plants, their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic  to prevent skin infections.

A. they are popular ornamental plants, their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic
B. they are popular ornamental plants,   and   their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic
C. they are popular ornamental plants,   and   their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope,   and   their nectar can be used for making sugar,   and   their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic
D. just as they are popular ornamental plants, their leaf fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar,   as well as   soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic
E. they are popular ornamental plants,   leaf-fibers as   raw material for rope,   nectar for   making sugar, and soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic

Technique:
We clearly have a list/parallel issue to deal with. We need to make sure that all items in the list are allowed to be in the same list. 
Answer choice D has " their  leaf fibers can...,  their  nectar can..., as well soft tissue can." Not parallel. Answer choice D is out.
Answer choice E ends with "and soft tissue can...," but the two items in the list just before that use a different construction. Answer choice E is out.
Answer choice C maintains parallelism, but what's up with all the "ands?" Items in a list shouldn't each be separated by an "and." Answer choice C is out.
Between A and B, B makes a change to the meaning in that it lumps the characteristics other than being ornamental into other pieces of information that aren't factors in why the plants are cultivated. We don't want to change the meaning, so we go with A.

Answer choice A.

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello everyone,

We hope this finds you well.

To provide a bit of clarity regarding the meaning issue raised by AndrewN and ThatDudeKnows, we would like to share our advice on the matter.

The approach we suggest to our students is to take the meaning conveyed by Option A as the intended meaning of the sentence.

This consideration should change only under two conditions:

1. If the meaning conveyed by Option A is entirely incoherent or illogical; in this case, the next logical and coherent meaning conveyed by an answer choice should be considered the intended meaning.

2. If Option A has a concrete grammatical error and an error-free answer choice conveys a different meaning; in this case, the error-free answer choice should be considered the superior option and the meaning it conveys should be assumed to be the intended meaning.

Broadly speaking, like  ThatDudeKnows , we too advise favoring the meaning conveyed by Option A, under most circumstances.

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

AndrewN · Answer

Thank you,  ExpertsGlobal5 , for providing clarity on this question, and indeed some insight into how your own questions are constructed. I may disagree with the pedagogy that there is something special about the meaning conveyed in the original sentence, at least concerning official questions, but you, Princeton Review, and other test prep companies (as well as private tutors) are welcome to design questions in whichever manner you see fit. And I see it as a plus if your company produces SC questions in a wholly consistent way with this teaching in mind.

- Andrew

ThatDudeKnows · Answer

Not anymore! It was in an answer explanation for a specific question, not in the general information section. If you have an OG from around 1998 or 2000, that would have been right around the vintage, but I don't think it's been in there for a long time.

Varane · Answer

Please share the Official Explaination for this.

Posted from my mobile device

Bunuel · Answer

Experts' Global Video Explanation:

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AndrewN · Answer

I should have clarified my earlier remark that I do not see anything "special about the meaning conveyed in the original sentence." When I come across a sentence such as  this one , in which a pronoun makes an appearance but is not really an issue, I do not designate this an important concern and see how other iterations of the sentence might clarify an ambiguity. The sentence, along with the correct answer, for reference:

Now, I am not debating the problematic phrase  with her public statement , but it is interesting that the gender identity of the CEO, I presume, falls by the wayside. Evidently, the question-writer just tossed in such extraneous information for no good reason when  with a public statement  would have served the same purpose, perhaps to distract the test-taker. However, if the gender identity of the CEO were important to grasping the intended meaning of the sentence, I would expect it to make an appearance in the correct answer.

That is all I was getting at in my earlier post. I meant no disrespect to anyone else.

- Andrew

naveengmat15 · Answer

can someone explain between A & B ,  KarishmaB   GMATNinja

KarishmaB · Answer

All I can say is that I would have chosen option (B) as the answer. When I read option (A), I thought the transition from 'they are popular' to the rest of the three points was a bit odd.
I liked (B) better because it said 
'... because they are popular and {they are useful}...'

'they are useful' is described using the 3 points on how the parts of the plant are useful: their leaf-fibres, their nectar and their soft tissues ..

The list of 4 points did not sit well with me, but other experts view it differently so I can't comment. Grammatically, both (A) and (B) are correct.

RitwikAgrawal · Answer

There is sentence structure issue between A and B. We should never take Option A as the "Intended Meaning" becuase it is just another option, that was just filled in the stem statement so as to not leave it blank.

Coming back to the sentence structure issue. Here is the issue in B:

B. they are popular ornamental plants, and their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic
 
When read with the non-underlined portion we get

Throughout the Southwestern United States, maguey, or American aloe, shrubs are widely cultivated because they are popular ornamental plants, and their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope, their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic to prevent skin infections.

Notice that if we remove the modifiers, and bracket out the 1st complete sentence, we get

{{Throughout the Southwestern United States, maguey, or American aloe, shrubs are widely cultivated because they are popular ornamental plants, and their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope}} ,  their nectar can be used for making sugar, and their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic to prevent skin infections.

The bold part is a sensible complete sentence, with the optional oxford comma. How ever the italics portion is a left out hanging disconnected clause.

This is not the issue with Option A. Which could again be read with Because attached to each part of the series, as in

Throughout the Southwestern United States, maguey, or American aloe, shrubs are widely cultivated because they are popular ornamental plants,  because  their leaf-fibers can be used as raw material for rope,  because  their nectar can be used for making sugar, and  because  their soft tissue can be used as an antiseptic to prevent skin infections.

I hope I have pointed the right mistake. Since this grammatical issue maybe the reason that is resulting in meaning issues.

Throughout the Southwestern United States, maguey, or American aloe

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Throughout the Southwestern United States, maguey, or American aloe

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