Writing: Logical comparison — Basic example

some prefer Thai style teas with their condensed milk hint of anise and touch of food dye to getting a conventional american-style cup of coffee so let's take a look at what the sentence is trying to do in order to determine what kind of question this is as with everything the first thing we can safely do is get rid of all the non-essential information so we have this little descriptive aside bounded by commas right with their condensed milk hint of anise and touch of food dye let's just for our purposes safely ignore that so when we think about the sentence what we're actually going to be perceiving is some prefer Thai style teas to getting a conventional American style cup of coffee and for me that helps make it a little clearer because that shows me that we're looking at a logical comparison question we're comparing Thai style teas to in this answer choice getting a conventional American style cup of coffee what we have to do in a logical comparison question is compare like two like and a phrase Apple comparing apples to apples in order to make an effective and logical comparison for one of these questions you have to be comparing two things that are similar enough to make a sensible comparison if that makes sense and it will because we're gonna go through it so right now option a is to leave it as it is no change and that is incorrect and I will tell you why because we're going to look at the nature of the comparison we're comparing Thai style teas to this whole thing getting a conventional American style cup of coffee why do I think this is wrong well Thai style teas is just a little noun phrase whereas getting a conventional American style cup of coffee is a gerund phrase see this ing verb is a gerund is a verb behaving as a noun and I can see how this would be a tempting choice right like a gerund is in its way technically a noun but what we're doing here is illogically comparing the experience of receiving a coffee right getting a conventional American style cup of coffee to the idea of Thai style teas themselves or teas as a category right and that's not the same that's not comparing apples to apples that's comparing apples to bowling-ball it's not the same it's not the same thing that could also be a coconut but let's just say it's a bowling ball it's not a logical comparison it's two completely separate classes of thing so what we're gonna want to do as we go through these answer choices is eliminate those options that don't really compare thai-style tees to in equivalent option be some prefer thai-style tees to a conventional american-style cup of coffee this to me seems to make sense I'm gonna say this is my frontrunner right now because it's not inexperienced it's just another now it's an american-style cup of coffee which contrasts neatly with Thai style teas but let's confirm that hunch by going on to option C and D so option C brewing a conventional american-style cup of coffee well this repeats the same error as the original choice getting a conventional american-style cup of coffee right it's comparing this experience of brewing to the idea of teas or two teas themselves it's not the same option tea being served a conventional American style cup of coffee it's awfully similar to answer a getting a conventional american-style cup of coffee and again it's this gerund this ing word right and it's just not it's not the same we're not comparing an experience to a tea we're trying to compare one hot beverage to another hot beverage and ultimately that's why I want to go with option B because it correctly compares a beverage to another beverage and that's what you want to do with a logical comparison question is you want to compare like two like apples to apples not apples to bowling balls or coconuts so you're looking for things within the same category to compare to one another so that it makes sense you