To portray an accurate portrait of deceased rapper Notorious B.I.G. fo

Question

To portray an accurate portrait of deceased rapper Notorious B.I.G. for a documentary film,  fellow rapper Jamal Woolard learned everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.

A. fellow rapper Jamal Woolard learned everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.
 B. fellow rapper Jamal Woolard learned everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he was working closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.
 C. fellow rapper Jamal Woolard is learning everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.
 D. and to learn everything he could about the murdered singer, fellow rapper Jamal Woolard is memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.
 E. fellow rapper Jamal Woolard learned everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and working closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.

happypuppy · Answer

Meaning:
To portray ....., fellow rapper learned.... about murdered singer, doing X, Y, Z. 
Here, XYZ are not in parallel, rest all look good.

Error:
This has straightforward parallelism error. With memorizing, studying and `he worked closely` don't go in parallel.

A) Wrong due to Error.
B) Wrong as "he was working" still not correct
C) Wrong as "is learning everything" changes the past to present continuous
D) Wrong as Mix of tenses, "is memorizing", "he worked" 
 E) Correct by fixing, he worked closely -> working

cptholt · Answer

Concept: Parallelism -

A) Wrong - First 2 items in the parallelism "memorizing", "Studying" are participles while the 3rd item "he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character" is a full clause. 
B) Wrong - Same as A; One more error, the clause is in past tense.
C) Wrong - Continuous tense is incorrect in the context of this sentence. 
D) Wrong - Same as A and error in tenses
E) Correct - All 3 items are parallel in this option and is the right choice.

akhilvarma8 · Answer

The question is trying to test your ability to understand parallelism and the use of verb-ing modifiers.

To portray an accurate portrait of deceased rapper Notorious B.I.G. for a documentary film,  fellow rapper Jamal Woolard learned everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.

Meaning: The question's intended meaning is suggesting that in order to portray an accurate..., rapper Jamal woolard did something, memorizing...,studying..., working closely... (here the verb-ing forms after the comma presents the how aspect for the action in the previous clause)

A. fellow rapper Jamal Woolard learned everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.  (He worked distorts the parallelism) 
B. fellow rapper Jamal Woolard learned everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he was working closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.  (He was working distorts the parallelism) 
C. fellow rapper Jamal Woolard is learning everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.  (He worked distorts the parallelism) 
D. and to learn everything he could about the murdered singer, fellow rapper Jamal Woolard is memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and he worked closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.  (He worked distorts the parallelism) 
E. fellow rapper Jamal Woolard learned everything he could about the murdered singer, memorizing the words to all his songs, studying videotapes of his mannerisms, and working closely with acting coaches to capture the subtleties of character.  Correct answer

rkd21 · Answer

Choice A - Parallelism error. The list should be A, B & C
Choice B - he was working should be working 
Choice C - Use of present continuous tense is learning is incorrect. Also, the error in choice A is repeated. 
Choice D - the sentence after the comma should mention the subject of the sentence "fellow rapper" to align with the prepositional phrase modifier "To portray..."
Choice E - correct

To portray an accurate portrait of deceased rapper Notorious B.I.G. fo

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

To portray an accurate portrait of deceased rapper Notorious B.I.G. fo

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

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Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards