Parallel Structure

[ricky20ca]

Hello guys,

Do you know what is Parallel Stucture, i am totally confused about it because i never heard about it.Help me Please.
Thanks a lot!!!

[Erin]

Hi, Ricky. Parallel structure is a fundamental grammar concept, and is very, very important both for the TOEFL and for the GMAT.

It takes a while to explain fully, and later I will check my info to see what I have, but the basic idea of parallel structure is quite simple:

When we use conjunctions, we must use the same part of speech on both sides of the conjuction.

Here's the "forumla":

X CONJUNCTION X

Here is a simple example of a mistake:

She is tall, strong, and she is fast .

This is incorrect because the three elements that are joined by the conjunction "and" are:

<ul>[*]tall = Adjective[*] strong = Adjective[*] she is fast = Sentence!!![/list]
So, this is WRONG because we need to have all the same parts of speech in our "list."

We should change this to:

She is tall, strong, and fast .

because

<ul>[*]tall = Adjective[*] strong = Adjective[*] fast = Adjective!!! [/list]
on this "list" all parts of speech are the same--adjectives. Now we are happy, we got our point on the TOEFL, and we're going to a great school!!

Make sense? Let me know if you have any other questions, Ricky.

Erin

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