With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.


(A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with

(B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its

(C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has

(D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its

(E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have


Source : GMATPrep Default Exam Pack


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\(NAIL\) \(THE\) \(ABSOLUTE\) \(PHRASES\)

#
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.

(A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with

(B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its

(C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has

(D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its

(E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have

This is many of those questions, which urge us to say "what does the author wants to convey?".
GMATTERS this is an example of the Absolute Phrase question. The sentences involving this concept generally introduce two clauses of which one modifies the entire idea of the preceding clause.

Most of the GMATTERS may be able to nail the question, under 2 mins, just posted above. But I am pretty sure that they must have neglected the concept of Absolute Phrases. There are/can be several mistakes in such questions which can easily help us to find the correct answer.

Anyways the answer to the question just posted above is .
In order to tackle such questions, I developed a technique and found it pretty useful.

Whenever you see such question, break the sentence into clauses, the basic step in SC questions. This blue portion is itself the Absolute Phrase which modifies the entire idea of the preceding clause.
Anyways, break the entire sentence into clauses.
i)With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit.
ii)Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life.
iii)and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.

Notice that the third clause is NOT the independent clause.

The method is Stop youself at the end of the clause after which the following clause is not independent and RAISE THE QUESTION \(HOW?\). If the forecoming clauses answers your question in exactly in its own words, then that clause is the Absolute Phrase and is the correct choice.

With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom.

(A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, \(HOW?\)and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom. Does it answers HOW in its own words? NO! Eliminate it.

(B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life,\(HOW?\) its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom. Does it answers HOW in its own words? YES!

(C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life and has 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom. All clauses are independent. No Absolute Phrase.

(D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life,\(HOW?\) and its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom. Does it answers HOW in its own words? NO!


(E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have
Disaster. eliminate it at once.

Other examples are:

#Sound can travel through water for enormous distances, prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a result of boundaries in the ocean created by water layers of different temperatures and densities.
1)same as underlined
2)prevented from having its acoustic energy dissipated by
3) its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by
4) its acoustic energy prevented from being dissipated as a result of
5) preventing its acoustic energy from dissipating by

#Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries.

Hope all the above stuff helps to beat the Absolute Phrase.
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This is what I think:

With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Farenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and, with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom

A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with
And is not required here. If we use AND then there should be a verb to support parallelism as in - Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, AND, with 60 square miles of water IS thought to be frozen from top to bottom

B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its
Correct answer.
Think of it like this: Europa, its 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom, has long been considered far too cold to support life.
This is a type of modifier I think although I'm not sure what the construction is called.

C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has
'Considered as' is wrong.

D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its
'Considered as' is wrong.
This sentence is a fragment, it does not have a verb - considered is not a proper verb, its a participle.

E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have
This sentence is a fragment, it does not have a verb - considered is not a proper verb, its a participle.
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Hey Sid,

If you're really using all the rules without naming them, that should be enough. But I find categorization is dependent on really having the names of the categories in your head, otherwise it's too much gut. I don't know how you're scoring on SC, but if you take our free practice test and your SC percent is under 60/65% correct, definitely consider pushing it a little harder and learning all the terminology. If you're doing better than that, however, it means that whatever you're doing is working, so keep doing it!

-t
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Hey Sid,

To take this piece by piece:



I'd done the free test quite a while back and scored 67% in verbal. -- Nice! Though definitely still room for improvement.

Recently I did the 25 questions in the SC question bank that is included with the purchase of the SC strategy guide and scored 21/25.
-That's a solid percentage.

All four mistakes were on 500-600 level questions where I narrowed down answers to two choices and then skipped the right choice for very vague reasons such as the right choice looking too simple or of an idiomatic construction I'd never come across.
--Vague reasons are tough. You should always be able to verbalize the exact reason you're crossing something off, even if it's meaning or concision ("I'm crossing out B because it's unclear what the modifier is referring to," for example).

I felt that this was slightly because I was aggressively looking for mistakes based on rules and that if I'd have gone with my gut feelings I'd have got those right.
--Remember, if you were aggressively look for mistakes based on rules, then you cross something off for a "vague reason", you're not using the rules. So you can hardly use the rules for that. If you think an issue is idiomatic or meaning, then you have to go with your gut/inherent understanding. But just recognize when you're doing it, and don't mix rule-based process of elimination with gut-based process of elimination (And always do as much of the former as possible before switching to the latter).

Btw, the Manhattan SC guide truly rocks!. I was never weak at verbal but the concepts this book taught me really redefined my approach to grammar. Hats off to you guys..
--Thanks! Glad it helped!

-t
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Yes; the answer must be B

We can ditch C, D and E since all these three choices are using gmatically wrong idiom considers as and consider to be
Between A and B, we can follow Marcab’s point.

But, I have different question to GMAT PILL? What exactly is the text trying to convey by saying that Europa has 60 square miles of frozen water from top tobottom. Is it referring to the depth of the ice from top to bottom? Then, does that mean 60 miles of depth frozen water all over its surface? . Or does it mean that Europa has only 60 square miles of ice, less than an eight miles square. Normally, I thought ice is measured in cubic volumes and not in square volumes. Just for my curiosity, please.
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I already said in the post that the question may be done by using other methods as well.
May I know which Idiom are you talking about in the above questions. I always kept myself miles away from Idioms.
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Sorry Marcab....

......whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses

Two Independent clauses are connected with and ?

Can you use Absolute phrase in ur way in this sentence !
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@Marcab;
Although I must be honest in admitting that, I haven’t gone through you note as yet, as I am hard - pressed these days for time due to some assignments, as my first reaction, I must appreciate your stupendous effort.

This, I aver, is initiative, involvement and enterprise. A big kudo to you.
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First look - misplaced modifier, grammatical construction

(A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with Wrong - "and with" must combine two like prepositional phrases, or "and" must precede an independent clause.

(B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its Best answer - I dislike how the predicate splits the subject and its modifying phrase (appositive), though it seems that the GMAT employs it frequently to throw off test takers. This really was a last resort.

(C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has Wrong - "with 60 square miles" should modify Europa, not be a predicate and demand equality to "too cold to support life." In a way, the last modifier should describe "too cold to support life" and not life.

(D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its Wrong - "and its" must combine two like phrases, or "and" must precede an independent clause.

(E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have Wrong - fragment.

IMO B