Studies of test scores show that watching television has a markedly positive effect on children whose parents speak English as a second language, as compared to those who are native English speakers.

1. to those who are
2. with children who are
3. with
4. to those whose parents are
5. with children whose parents are

This problem shows up in MGMAT CAT. I choose #4 and got it wrong because I didn't use the proper idiom "compared with". However, the OA mentions that "those" in answer choice does not have a referent. But wouldn't "those" refer to children because in the answer choice, "to those whose parents", you can replace those with children (to children whose parents) but not with parents (to parents whose parents). If the answer choice didn't have the wrong 'compared with' idiom, would it still be incorrect? Or does this follow the standard case where as long as a pronoun could refer to two different things, its ambiguous.

what is the OA?

Comparisons require parallelism. In this case, we'd need to compare either:
(1) children who speak English as a second language and children who are native speakers
or
(2) children whose parents speak English as a second language and children whose parents are native speakers

In the original sentence, the first half of the comparison is "children whose parents speak English as a second language." The second half of the comparison needs to be fully parallel to the first half, so when we say "those who are native English speakers," we have two options for "those."

(1) "Those" refers to the main noun in the first half of the comparison: "children." This would make the second half of the comparison "children who are native English speakers." This is problematic because it isn't an apples to apples comparison (we aren't comparing the parents of one group of children to the parents of another group of children).
(2) "Those" refers to the full first half of the comparison: "children whose parents speak English as a second language." This would make the second half of the comparison "children whose parents speak English as a second language who are native English speakers." That doesn't make sense.

So, "those" is problematic either way. Eliminate both A and D. (And, no, changing the "to" to "with" in D will not make D an acceptable answer, because it still contains the problematic "those.")

Muneet - OA is E.

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Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT

Stacey my understanding was "those" can refer to "children" or "parents". I didnt totally get the second option of "those" referring to "children whose parents speak English as a second language". Can a pronoun refer to a phrase/clause ??

Can you give some examples to explain this.

Yeah, on first read, one could think that "those" possibly refers to "parents," too! I'd make that option #3, the worst interpretation because it really violates parallelism (logically and structurally).

But I think Stacey's point is that we must interpret "those" as "children" because of the structure of the sentence. Watch what happens when we temporarily ignore the modifiers (in parentheses):

Studies of test scores show that watching television has a markedly positive effect on children (whose parents speak English as a second language), as compared to those (who are native English speakers).

"Children" and "those" are used the same way. "Parents" and "those" are not! So we ultimately don't reject A and D for using "those" in an ambiguous way; we reject A because the modifiers in parentheses above are not logically parallel: whose parents do something =/= who are something.

It would not be my default assumption that "those" could refer to the entire clause "children whose parents..." just because that interpretation of (D) ignores the parallelism suggesting that only "children" = "those." For me, the idiom is the most compelling reason to reject D.

But in another context, yes, you could have a pronoun that refers to a whole clause:

The students (who are in the sixth grade) (who have turned in their permission slips) may board the bus for the field trip.

Obviously, "who have turned in their permission slips" isn't referring to "sixth grade." It's refering to the sixth grade students, or the entire first clause.

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Emily Sledge
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

Hello Emily,

I am still confused here. I also selected D.

I do not understand your reference to an Idiom in D.

Also, you mentiond that A is rejected because
"whose parents do something =/= who are something"

But the correct answer choice (E) also does the same thing

whose parents do something =/= (With )children whose parents are.

Can you please explain what am I missing.

Thanks,

Vineet

The idiom split tested here is "compared with" vs. "compared to." This question may have been written a while ago... Our current strategy guide says that "The GMAT ignores the traditional distinction between COMPARED TO (emphasizing similarities) and COMPARED WITH (emphasizing differences)." The strategy guide goes on to say that "AS COMPARED WITH (or TO)" is suspect, but not wrong.


Studies of test scores show that watching television has a markedly positive effect on children (whose parents speak English as a second language), as compared _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

(A) to those who are native English speakers

(E) with children (whose parents are native English speakers)

You are right, the way the parents are described in E is not exactly parallel, but the parents are not required to be parallel. In E, the parallelism is between children whose parents X and children whose parents Y. X and Y don't have to be exactly the same. For example, this is fine:
Children whose parents are rodeo clowns have more fun than children whose parents sell real estate.

With (A), even when you put aside concerns about whether "those" refers to "children" or "parents," a parallelism problem exists either way:
(1) If Those = children
children (whose parents speak English as a second language) =/= children (who are native English speakers)
This is not just a problem because speak something =/= are something, but because one group is categorized by a quality the parents have, and the other group is categorized by a quality the children have.

(2) If those = parents
children (whose parents speak English as a second language) =/= parents (who are native English speakers)
This is a problem because it compares a group of children to a group of adults.

In real-life, of course you can compare children to adults, or any group to any other group, no matter how you define those groups! But the GMAT defaults to apples-to-apples comparisons, and that is what we find in E.

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Emily Sledge
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

I selected option D too.

to those whose parents are

My reasoning was:

"those" has a clear antecedant in "children," as "parents" is already mentioned in the option.Hence "those" could not have possibly refferered to "parents".


"whose" is the the possesive form hence correct here.

so D is virtually,

compared [b]to children whose parents are [/b]native English speakers


The only real contention is with the idiom.
If "compared to" is acceptable (as Qouted in the latest post) would option D not qualify as the answer ?

Instructuctors kindly throw some light.
Thanks.

same doubt as Pritesh.

those could only refer to children?..

If "those" refers to parents..the 2nd part would be...

parents whose parents are....

But the 1st part says -

children whose parents speak..compared to
those whose parents are....

It seems like "those" structurally and logically refers to children..

i've talked with Stacey, and we agree that "those" is fine to use for "children" in D, so the only real difference between D and E is the preposition at the beginning. Since that is a distinction that appears to be irrelevant these days, we have referred the problem to our problem writing committee. As far as i'm concerned, both D and E are acceptable on this one and the question is thus invalid..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor