Tricks Magical have introduce to Parallel Structure – Essay Writing. We often need to write a list of things or activities in a single sentence. Have you often thought that there is a rule to that?
Yes, and that is called parallelism.
For example: Now, first of all, taking a look at the below sentence.
Rohit likes hiking, swimming, and to ride a motorboat.
Do you feel something uncomfortable with the above sentence?
Well, the above sentence is wrong as hiking and swimming are nouns whereas to ride a motorboat is a phrase.
So, a parallel structure is formed when all the parts of the list within a sentence follow the same grammatical form noun with a noun, adjective with an adjective, phrase with a phrase, tense with a tense and so on.
Thus, the corrected sentence shall be as follow:
Rohit likes hiking, swimming, and riding a motorboat.
Few more examples:
He mastered the art of painting slowly and steadily over a period of five years.
Slowly and steadily are the adverbs here.
He practised hard, worked harder, and earned a lot of money.
Practised, worked and earned all are in the simple past tense.
You can read How to write an Essay Writing Task 2 band 7+ to learn more Parallel Structure.
Note Parallel Structure – Essay Writing:
1.Parallelism is not only limited to ‘and’ conjunction, but it is applicable to all other coordinating conjunctions such as for, nor, but, or, yet and so.
2. Parallelism is also required to be followed with correlative conjunctions such as
- not only + but also
- either + or, neither + not
- both + and
- and so on
3. When introducing a list with subordinating conjunction such as ‘because’.
For example: this is because of thing 1, thing 2 and thing 3. All these different things should follow a parallel structure.
