Young children may benefit more from bumping their heads and putting various objects in their mouths than they will from staring at eye-catching cartoons

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
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Which is incorrect? Young children may benefit more from bumping their heads and putting various objects in their mouths than they will from staring at eye-catching cartoons.
The answer is and, but I don’t know why, I saw the answer sheet , it said using or instead of and in this sentence.
And why they use *than they will from *, why they use will. I don’t understand the grammar.

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It’s a comparison of two things:

  1. bumping their heads
  2. staring at eye-chatching cartoons

Since it’s a comparison we use ‘than’. As for ‘will’, it’s just a way of expressing a possibility.

Please let me know if this makes sense.

PS: Welcome to our forum :wink:

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If I understand these kind of questions, there are four highlighted words, and one of them is incorrect?

They all look OK to me. I don’t see anything wrong with the entire sentence.

@Torsten As I read it, they are comparing two things to one thing.
Benefit more from [bumping and putting] than [staring]

The words ‘may’ and ‘will’ indicate how likely something is. The words ‘they will’ can be left out.

… in their mouths than from staring at eye-catching cartoons
It could be said in other ways:
… in their mouths than they do from staring at eye-catching cartoons
… in their mouths than they would from staring at eye-catching cartoons

The entire sentence is sarcastic. It’s a statement about how bad it is for children to spend large amounts of time watching cartoons. It compares watching cartoons to bumping heads and putting things in their mouth. It says that watching cartoons may be worse than bumping heads.

It’s saying if they watch cartoons bad things will happen. It might even be worse than bumping heads and putting things in their mouths.

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Thank for you answer, but I don’t know why using and between pumping their head and putting thing in their mouth is wrong.

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It’s not wrong.

If they say it’s wrong, maybe they think it should be or instead of and. But there is nothing grammatically wrong with and. The word they use depends on the intent of the writer, not grammar.

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