- Whiteboard
- Flag
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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 a
foreign army's supply line and preventing these bordering powers from invading
by train.
Title
Whereas both Europe and
Your Result
Correct
Difficulty
Medium
Your Pace
0:06
Others' Pace
1:13
Video Explanation
Text Explanation
Split #1: Parallelism #1. In the subordinate clause that follows "Russian gauge", the pronoun "that" is the subject and there are two verbs in parallel. The first is "gives" and the second also must be in the present tense: "acts". Choices (A) & (B) & (C) have this correct. Choices (D) & (E) have "acting", which violates the parallelism, so these are incorrect.
Split #2: a very peculiar idiom: "act like" vs "act as", which is discussed in this blog. This is not the standard "like" vs. "as" split. The idiom "act like" means the subject intentionally decides to imitate the attributes of something else; humans can "act like" something, and, under certain circumstances, more intelligent animals could "act like" something if we attribute some kind of intentionality to them. An inanimate object can never "act like" anything. The idiom "act as" means that, without an intentionality, one object take the role of another. Here, we are talking about railroad gauge, an inanimate object, which could never "act like" anything. We need the construction "acts as", so only (A) & (C) & (D) have this correct.
Split #3: Parallelism #2. We have two verbs in parallel after the words "national defense" --- the verb "block/blocking" and the verb "preventing." The second is not part of the underlined section, so it is locked in that –ing participle form, "preventing." That means we need the parallel verb also in this form: "blocking." Only (C) & (D) have this correct.
The only possible answer is (C).
Related Lessons
Watch the lessons below for more detailed explanations of the concepts tested in this question. And don't worry, you'll be able to return to this answer from the lesson page.
