First of all, try this Sentence Correction question. A full explanation will follow later in the post.
1) Whereas both Europe and China use standard railroad gauge (1435 mm), Russia deliberately chose the wider “Russian gauge” (1520 mm) that gives greater side-to-side stability in railways cars and, more importantly, acts as a national defense, so that it would block foreign army’s supply line and preventing these bordering powers from invading by train.
- acts as a national defense, so that it would block
- acts like a national defense, so as to block
- acts as a national defense, blocking
- acting as a national defense, blocking
- acting like a national defense, would block
“Like” vs. “As”
As I explain in the post linked above, in general “like” is followed only by a single noun, and is used to compare nouns; but “as” is followed by a full noun + verb clause, and is used to compare actions.
2) This rookie swings like Ted Williams.
3) Ted Williams leads the majors in career on-base percentage, as Babe Ruth leads in career slugging percentage. Each is in second place behind the other on the respective lists.
The Idiom: “act like”
You will get a lot of mileage out of the general rule for “like” vs. “as”, but it is no longer a reliable guide when you get to this idiom.
In English, the idiom “to act like” means to behavior or comport one’s self in imitation of something else. If I “act like a king”, that implies that I am not a king, but something about my behavior (presumably, my entitlement and presumption) resembles that of a king. A person is capable of intending to imitate something, so a person can “act like” something. Conceivably, an intelligent animal (one of the higher primates, for example) could be induced to imitate something, in which case we could say: the chimpanzee “acts like” such-and-such. Any inanimate object is utterly devoid of intentionality, so we cannot in any way attribute imitative behavior to it: therefore, we can never use the idiom “act like” with an inanimate object. With an object, we always have to use “act as.”
Explanation of the Question
First of all, from the foregoing discussion, we know that the inanimate object “Russian gauge” cannot “act like” anything, because it doesn’t have the conscious ability to imitate. If the subject is an inanimate object, we need to use “act as”. Thus, (B) and (E) are out immediately.
We also have two parallel constructions we need to maintain here. We need the two verbs following “Russian gauge” to be in parallel —- the first is “gives”, so the second has to be the parallel “acts” —- thus, (D) is out.
The second parallelism is between “would block”/”blocking” and the participle “preventing”; clearly, we need the participle “blocking” for the first verb. Therefore, (A) is out, and the only correct answer remaining is (C).
Mike: I selected option D for parallelism acting/blocking….
Why can’t these two be parallel. Why act has to be parallel with gives?
Can’t we say……
The railroad gauge gives greater stability……..acting as anational defence, and blocking…….
I guess “and” is necessary…is it?
Dear Nishant:
The verb “act” is NOT parallel to the verb “block” — the verb “act” is parallel to the verb “gives” (in the pre-underline section), and so much be parallel to that. Think about the subject of the verb “act’ — if you follow back to the subject of that verb, you see it has to be parallel to “gives”
“… Russia choose the wide gauge that gives ….. and …. acts” — that’s why “acts” is correct and “acting” is 100% wrong. The “block” verb need to be parallel the participle “preventing”, so it must be in the form “blocking.”
Does all this make sense?
Mike
Mike: Thanks, yes it all does make sense. If it were given “and prevents” instead of “preventing” then It would have been “blocks”. Am I right?
Nishant
Precisely!
Mike
Hey Mike,
I think Magoosh should offer some practice tests for GMAT. I honestly feel you and Chris do a perfect job with GMAT questions. I didn’t come across better tutors than you guys. Only thing, if you guys can come up with some practice tests that would be great. There are lot of guys like me who are waiting to buy practice tests from magoosh.
Thanks,
Yesh: Thank you for your kind words. It’s true we don’t have a single-button for a practice test, but it’s really not very hard inside the Magoosh product to set up a CAT section for yourself. On the “Practice” page, you would select math or verbal, then difficulty = “Adaptive”, Pool = (your preference), Number of Questions = 37 for Quant or 41 for Verbal, and Time Limit = 75 minutes. Voila! You have a CAT section. Write a practice essay, do the IR questions, then do a Verbal section and a Quant Section — that’s a full practice GMAT, with CAT on the Q & V sections. Again, we don’t package it already designed — you have to set it up yourself, but that takes less than 30 seconds, and then you are good to go. Does that make sense?
Mike
Mike,is the use of ‘it’ in the answer choice A wrong ?
Faruk: actually, in choice (A), the singular pronoun “it” correctly refers back to the singular antecedent “Russian gauge.” Perfectly correct. Parallelism is a problem in (A), but not the pronoun.
Mike