Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people d

Question

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene,violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops among people in their common quest to conquer nature.

• surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,
an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that
often develops
• ~~surfing’s appeal~~ is its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable
backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops
• ~~surfing’s appeal~~ to people is due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and developing camaraderie
• surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,a backdrop that is unpredictable and that is, by turns, ~~gracefully and serenely violent and formidable~~, and the camaraderie that often develops
• surfing appeals to people due ~~to their unusual~~ confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that
often develops

time consuming because of lengthy and multi-braked structure.

B,C - Modifier inconsistency
D, E - change meaning

sayantanc2k · Accepted Answer

All the options are grammatically incorrect. 
"Due" is an adjective and hence it should be used to refer to a noun.
The appeal was due to... is correct. ( due  is an adjective for the noun  appeal )
Surfing appeals due to... is wrong. (  due  is wrongly used as an adverb for the verb appeals)

For the above reason A, D and E can be eliminated.

B and C are wrong because of modifier error. Surfing's appeal was not developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing was.

Note: one small suggestion - do not replace "due to" with " caused by" to check whether the usage is alright. A more efficient and conceptually more solid way is to see whether "due to" is used as an adjective and "because of" as an adverb. A quick tip: "due to" follows verb "to be" (because "due to" is adjective) - "because of" follows other verbs ( because "because of" is adverb.)

ConnectTheDots · Answer

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians,  surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene,violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops  among people in their common quest to conquer nature.

• surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,
an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that
often develops
•  surfing’s appeal  is its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable
backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops
•  surfing’s appeal  to people is due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and developing camaraderie
• surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,a backdrop that is unpredictable and that is, by turns,  gracefully and serenely violent and formidable , and the camaraderie that often develops
• surfing appeals to people due  to their unusual  confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that
often develops

time consuming because of lengthy and multi-braked structure.

B,C - Modifier inconsistency 
D, E - change meaning

riteshbindal · Answer

A IMO. Reasoning: 1. B and C are out because after "," we need a noun. surfing's appeal was not originally developed by ancient Hawaiians :-D

---- Left with A, D and E. 2. D is out because "a backdrop that is unpredictable" is wordy in D which is replaced by "unpredictable backdrop" in A and E ---- Left with A and E. 3. E is out because "their" is referring to people which is not correct. It has to be sport's. So left with A. What is the OA?

hogann · Answer

OA is A

This sentence contains three parallel elements: “the unusual confluence,” “an unpredictable backdrop,” and “the camaraderie.” Additionally, the introductory modifying phrase “originally developed by ancient Hawaiians” correctly modifies the noun “surfing.”

daagh · Answer

This formidable looking exercise has to be dissected before sorting out. 
First of all, the participial modifier has to refer to the sport and not sport’s appeal hence B and C are out. 
Surfing appeals due to three diverse factors.

1. unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering
2. an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable,
3. the camaraderie that often develops among people

D is wrong because the two aspects enumerated by the second factor namely 1. 'graceful and serene' and 2. 'violent and formidable' are independent of each other but alternating. To say that gracefully and serenely violent and formidable is oxymoronic. Violent itself is unserene.

E falters in the very beginning by using a wrong pronoun ‘ their ’, alluding to the people rather than by using ‘ its ’ to refer to the sport

A avoids all these pitfalls and is the right answer.

kinghyts · Answer

Experts please help me understand how does  due to("caused by")  modify the noun  "people"   in the correct option  ... surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline....

blueseas · Answer

hi , you are perfectly right in your concepts....so you will not see such ambiguity in official questions... but for the sake of practice ..as all option contain DUE TO..just consider other errors..and move.. by the way..good catch from your side. cheers :-D

BeckyRobinsonTPR · Answer

While this point is gramatically correct, in most writing "due to" is used as an expression meaning something close to "because". An official GMAT question may not have a sentence with this technical error, but it is important to understand that the other four answers have much more major, and gramatically clear problems so A has to be the answer.

BeckyRobinsonTPR · Answer

the first issue I would take on in this problem is the misplaced modifier which is made clear from the opening descriptive phrase "Originally developed..."

This errro eliminates B and C because "surfing's appeal" was not developed by Hawaiians.

E has a glaring pro noun error - refering to "surfing" with the word "their"

D - when comparing A and D, you notice that A has "unpredictable backdrop" and D has "A backdrop that is unpredictable" this wordiness makes A a better answer. D also has parallelism problems and incorrectly says that the backdrop is "serenly violent"

plumber250 · Answer

Hi Cumulonimbus,

B's major error is early on:
 
Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing’s appeal

This is suggesting that 'surfing's appeal' was developed by ancient Hawaiians. This is not correct of course. it was surfing that was developed.

Take a look at some of the other answer choices, their wording eliminates this issue.

Cheers,

James

jugglerG2 · Answer

Absolutely knocked out by this one. Here it goes:

First off fixing modifier error:

Its "Surfing" that could have been "Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians" not "surfing’s appeal" so ruling out B and C.

Secondly, fixing the pronoun error:

Since we are talking about one sport, i.e. "Surfing", usage of "their" in option "E" makes it run for money.

Finally, need to put the things parallel:

"confluence of ....., an unpredictable backdrop...., and the camaraderie...." is the only way I feel parallelism can be maintained and "gracefully and serenely violent and formidable" looks illogical to me and hence I will go with A.

Kudos expected if answer is right and if not, OE to shed some lights.

chetan2u · Answer

hi souvik,
 great work in getting some very good questions...
now for the answer. two things which can get us to the correct answer..
1)  Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians  modifies surfing, so B and C are out..
2) parallelism- surfing appeals to people due to  the sport’s unusual confluence  of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,  an unpredictable backdrop  that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and  the camaraderie  that often develops

A. surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops  correct

D. surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,  a backdrop that is unpredictable  and that is, by turns, gracefully and serenely violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops   the portion in red changes the meaning...

E. surfing appeals to people due to  their  unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops. their wrongly refers to people rather than to sport

ans A

smartyguy · Answer

chetan2u

Crisp explanation

Can you please help me in clarifying my doubts

I have marked them red in the question below :

Originally(Adverb) developed(Verb ED modifier) by ancient Hawaiians  (I wanted to confirm that adverb is modifying verb and that verb ed modifier is modifying ancient hawaiians(noun) am i right ??) ,  surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops  among people in  their   (refers to people or something else ?? if something else does it makes sense)  common quest to conquer nature

Regards
SG

chetan2u · Answer

hi smarty,
look at the entire clause  Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians , it is modifying surfing....
'their' does not have any plural antecedent other than people, so it correctly refers back to people

cledgard · Answer

I have my doubts about A: "and the camaraderie that often develops among people in their common quest to conquer nature".
What is this parallel to?
"graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develop... " - not possible

" due to the sport’s unusual confluence of   adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering,  an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable,  and the camaraderie that often develops ..." could be, but we have a previous and "and high paced adrenaline"

Then it must be  confluence... and the camaraderie...   but this is too far from  due to , making it confusing. Shouldn't it be better "due to the confluence...and  to  the camaraderie..."?

HMC · Answer

I would eliminate D and E because Due to in both of them when replaced by Caused by distorts the sentence.

Does anyone think like me? Am I right in eliminating D and E like that... please help..

warriorguy · Answer

why is 'due to' correct in this correct sentence?

GMATNinja · Answer

Hm... I don't think that "due to" is correct here at all. I completely agree with  sayantanc2k  -- "due to the sport's unusual confluence..." must modify a noun, but that phrase clearly is trying to modify "appeals." And that's a verb. So "due to" is wrong.

Also, I couldn't find this question in any Official Guide, so I'm suspicious that this question is from a non-official source, unless I missed something when I was looking through several OG editions.

Can anybody confirm the source of this one? I saw a discussion of it on an MGMAT forum, so maybe it's theirs?

leanhdung · Answer

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians,  surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops  among people in their common quest to conquer nature.

(A) surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an  unpredictable backdrop  that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops

(B)  surfing’s  appeal is its unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops

(C)  surfing’s  appeal to people is due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and developing camaraderie

(D) surfing appeals to people due to the sport’s unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, a  backdrop that is unpredictable  and that is, by turns, gracefully and serenely violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops

(E) surfing appeals to people due to  their  unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people d

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Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people d

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