关于instead of 和rather than 的疑惑？

都是接名词性质的成分。

以前看过说rather than优于instead of,但个人觉得取决于题目本身，不要把这个作为优先级来排除。况且，在OG 11里我看到几个instead of正确，而rather than错误的选项，可见这种总结不一定正确。

instead of 接名词性成分

rather than 除了接名词性成分比如rather than sth./sb./doing sth.外，还可以接不带to的动词不定式

比如：rather than waste/wasting your time

字典的解释一样：

From Longman:

Instead: adv.

1. instead of somebody/something

used to say what is not used, does not happen etc, when something else is used, happens etc

You probably picked up my keys instead of yours.

Could I have tuna instead of ham?

Instead of being annoyed, he seemed quite pleased.

Rather than:

Rather than: instead of

I think you'd call it a lecture rather than a talk. Rather than go straight on to university why not get some work experience first? Bryson decided to quit rather than accept the new rules.

在OG11-64中，正确选项将划线部分的instead of 换成了rather than，也许rather than 更prefered?

同接名词性成分我觉的没有区别，如果两个选项只有instead of和rather than的区别而且都是跟名词性成分，显然两个都错了

OG11-64题instead of和rather than没有区别，ETS更偏向rather than和not...but的结构我想是因为搭配不象instead of有限制，而且看上去很平行很工整

根据一个英文写作style网站的说法，

1.rather than 比instead of 更formal tone。考虑到GMAT考察商业书面英文的原则，rather than优于instead of

2. rather than后面可以接任何成分，但是，当它不是紧跟着主句的动词时，也就是说，当它只作为句子中的一个插入成分时，它后面的动词要是动名词形式。如The results of the study, rather than ending (not end or ended) the controversy, only added to it.这种情况下，为了避免争议，还是用instead of比较好。（因此，貌似，instead of常常用于引导一个插入成分，一个不完整结构？我的推理）

对比下面这句话，就要用rather than，The results of the study added to the controversy rather than ended it.在这句话里，add 和end是并列的平等的，而上一句，end居从属地位。

供参考