每日错题总结

仝介

12.17 km网上第TN24套 正确率72%，5/18错误率，平均每题89s

The cottontail rabbit population in Orange County, California, has increased unchecked in recent years as a result of the removal of the native fox population and the clearing of surrounding woodlands.
(A) years as a result of the removal of
(B) years as a result of removing
(C) years, resulting from the removing of
(D) years, which is a result of removing
(E) years, which is a result of the removal of

正确答案是A，我选的是C

选择C的原因，从and the clearing of...推测前面也是n//，最好是v+ing形式来//.觉得C很完美啊

但是！

1. whether 'as a result of' is better than 'resulting from', at least in gmat?

you can't use 'resulting from' as an adverbial modifier, as is done here. in general, 'resulting from' is only used as an adjective modifier, almost always without a comma, as in
the pollution resulting from the chemical spill forced all the local residents to evacuate.

对adverbial modifier的更多解释：

I believe that Ron was making a point about diction (word choice) rather than a point about grammar, when he wrote "you can't use 'resulting from' as an adverbial modifier." That is, you can't use "resulting from" to modify a verb or clause.

You're right about the grammatical (structural) point; in C the -ing phrase after the comma must be an adverbial modifier. In fact, Ron acknowledges this when he writes "you can't use 'resulting from' as an adverbial modifier, as is done here."

The problem is precisely that C uses as an adverbial modifier an expression that musty be used as a noun modifier.

2.whether it is incorrect or unnatrual to say 'the removing of sth'?

removal is better.

there are a bunch of words like these, with specific noun forms that, simply because they exist, are considered better than the corresponding gerund (-ing) forms. notable among this class of nouns are the '-al' forms, like removal, betrayal, etc.

unfortunately, there are no general tips of the form you're soliciting; such are the joys of the english language. the closest i can get to a general rule is this: if a special noun form exists, use it. if not, use the -ing form.

as for your examples above, you wouldn't want 'removing' because removal is a better substitute. clearing, though, is fine because there's no specially designated noun form for that one.

仝介

12.20 TN第23套前六题   正确率50%

Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than nonunion members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend less time with each.

(A) imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend

(B) imposing stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients, and spending

(C) that impose stricter limits on medical services，require doctors to see more patients, and spend

(D) that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, spending

(E) that impose stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients and spending

正确答案是D,我选了E

choice a: 'spend' is ungrammatical here (it has no logical subject, and isn't parallel to anything).
choice b: imposing, requiring, and spending are all parallel, implying that the insurance plans do all three of these things (an absurdity荒谬 in the last case).
choice c: all three verbs are parallel again, leading to the same absurdity witnessed in choice b.
choice d (= correct): the parallelism follows the model outlined above: only the verbs that are logically parallel appear in parallel structure.
in choice d, you could legitimately make a case that 'spending' could modify the entire huge clause about what insurance plans do, and is therefore ambiguous. however, that's the OA, so you've learned that this problem is ok in the eyes of the gmat people. if there's a rule that can be articulated here, it's probably something along the lines of 'participial modifier applies to nearest action'.
choice e: 'requiring' and 'spending' are parallel in the modifier, implying that the plans themselves spend time with patients (in addition to requiring blah blah blah). this doesn't make sense.

in choice e, parallelism dictates that requiring and spending refer to the same subject, which must be insurance plans. (you can't say doing X and doing Y if X and Y are done by different agents.)

you have to realize which verbs are supposed to be parallel and which aren't. there's no grammatical formula for this; you have to examine the meaning of the sentence to figure it out.
- 'impose' (in whatever form) should be parallel to 'require' (again, in whatever form). these are two different things, both of which are aspects of the plan (= logical parallelism).
- 'spend' should not be parallel to 'see', because it functions as a modifier of 'see' (it's a descriptive adverb modifier, detailing the way in which the doctors see the patients).  "spending" is adverbial. It doesn't modify "doctors" or any other noun.
针对D 的专门分析

Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than nonunion members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans [that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors [to see more patients]], spending...

in this case, the COMMA -ING modifier could grammatically modify either the blue clause or the purple clause (which is nested within the blue one). from context, it should be clear that the modifier is meant to modify the purple clause.

(this is normally what happens in this type of situation with nested clauses: an attached COMMA -ING modifier will normally modify the embedded, smaller clause. there is no need to memorize the statistical rule for this, however -- in most cases, such as this one, the context will make quite clear what is being modified and what is not.)

the COMMA -ING modifier modifies the action of the purple clause, and also applies to the subject of the purple clause -- namely, the relative pronoun "that". this relative pronoun, in turn, refers to "lower-end insurance plans". so the rule still works.

Because she knew many of the leaders of colonial America and the American Revolution personally, Mercy Otis Warren was continually at or near the center of political events from 1765 to 1789, a vantage point combining with her talent for writing to make her one of the most valuable historians of the era

(A) same as above

(B) a vantage point, when combined with her talent for writing, that made

(C) a vantage point that combined with her talent for writing, and it made

(D) and this vantage point, which combined with her talent for writing to make

(E) and this vantage point, combined with her talent for writing, made

A."ing" modifiers are active forms. in other words, if properly used, they should have a meaning equivalent to that of an active-voice verb whose subject is the noun in question.
so, if you are going to write "a vantage point combining...", that's equivalent to saying that "the vantage point combined..." -- in other words, suggesting a literal act of combining, as in a chemical reaction or something along those lines.

C it stands for a vantage point. that doesn't really make sense in context, so that's one reason to eliminate this choice.

这道题的难点

the problem that "combined" appears as an active verb in that choice -- suggesting that this vantage point actively "combined" with the author's writing talent (as in some sort of chemical reaction, or something).

with that setup, you would also have "... that combined with her talent for writing" as a standalone clause, with only non-essential modifiers -- implying that you could get rid of those modifiers and just say "this vantage point combined with her talent for writing" by itself. that also doesn't make sense; the whole "combined" thing doesn't make any sense without a reference to the result.

仝介

发出来才发现排版丑爆了，然而我并没有心思改！