Boomerang - Impulse shopping

[RonPurewal]

it's true that you won't see many modifiers like this (", not __ing")—not because they're incorrect, but simply because there are better alternatives.

e.g., for your example here...

Finally, he decided not to come with me, not making me happy.

... ", making me unhappy" is better, and almost certainly more accurate, too: presumably, the intended meaning is that you were actually upset, and not that you simply "failed to be happy" (whatever that means).

[RonPurewal]

by contrast, there's no better way to write "not paying" in my example above. (there are words for not doing stuff, but just about all of them carry extra implications——failing to pay implies that the failure wasn't entirely intentional, refusing to pay implies that he said no to an explicit request, and so on——that are inappropriate here.)

[RonPurewal]

...and, MUCH more importantly:
note that these aren't issues of right and wrong, but, rather, issues of "better" and "worse". so, 3 essential things.

1/
since they are not actually errors, these kinds of things will NEVER be required on an official SC problem.

2/
if you're going to think about these things at all, you should ALWAYS make relative judgments.
i.e., not "this choice is good" or "this choice is bad", but, rather, "choice x is better than choice y".

3/
if you're going to think about these things, you should do so only after exhausting ALL possible opportunities to find actual errors... basically, because #1.

[gbyhats]

it's true that you won't see many modifiers like this (", not __ing")—not because they're incorrect, but simply because there are better alternatives.

Very interesting! This explains why when I read my example, I felt it was a little bit awkward (I never heard people say this way).

by contrast, there's no better way to write "not paying" in my example above.

Yeah. Your words remind me something like "the big difference between 'I don't see the elephant' (inability to see) and 'I see no elephant' (no elephant here for sure)"

since they are not actually errors, these kinds of things will NEVER be required on an official SC problem.

Haha, whenever I see these kind of words from you, I know I'm delve somewhat too much about this. But I will bear those in mind, as long as you say that can be legit criteria to rule out choices (with caution).

[RonPurewal]

you should be very, very cautious about "delving" into too many subtleties/niceties/style issues.
the capacity of your conscious mind is finite--so, the more you dive into ideas that are ultimately marginal or irrelevant to the exam, the greater the chance that you'll think less about major things.

i've seen this happen quite a few times with students who just studied this stuff for too long. they got to the point of having so many little teeny subtle things in their heads that they stopped seeing things like non-parallelism.

[charmanineW924]

I have two questions ：

1.
Do sth and also do sth
Do sth and do sth as well
Do sth and also do sth as well
I want to know are these sentences wrong or OK(I mean, they are OK,but it is redundancy )
Can we just eliminate some choices by seeing that ?

2.
Is the beginning part of E right?
Shoppers in sporting goods stores, unlike (shoppers in )department stores-->We just contrast shoppers in different places .
I think it is right ,and has a different emphasis from the following part :
Shoppers in sporting goods stores, unlike shoppers in department stores
Is it right ?

[RonPurewal]

1.

Do sth and also do sth
Do sth and do sth as well

you'll sometimes see things like this ^^ for reasons of emphasis or style. these reasons are not tested on the exam.

Do sth and also do sth as well

this ^^, on the other hand, is definitely redundant (since 'also' and 'as well' are trying to play the same role).

[RonPurewal]

2.
Is the beginning part of E right?
Shoppers in sporting goods stores, unlike (shoppers in )department stores-->We just contrast shoppers in different places .

no.
if you see '(un)like X', then 'X' is compared/contrasted with something else.
you cannot pretend that there are other words between '(un)like' and 'X'.

...so, if you see 'unlike department stores', you MUST be contrasting department stores with something else.
that's not what the sentence is meant to do, so the sentence is incorrect.

[RaghavS269]

isn't "and" and "as well" in option D redundant?

[RonPurewal]

"is the correct answer wrong?"

no.