Parallelism is one of the most common GMAT topics related to sentence correction.
It tests an individual not only on his grammar but also logic. Consider two sentences P and Q which are required to be put in parallel to one another.
It’s not sufficient that P and Q are grammatically correct which is the bare minimum.
In order to construct parallelism accurately, it is necessary for P and Q to match along the grammatical lines and also fulfill the same logical role in the sentence.
There is no given formula for parallelism- all it requires is to focus on the logic and engage the same with the meaning of the sentence.
What can be parallel?
Two individual words can be placed in parallel with one another such as two nouns, two adjectives, two verbs, etc.
Some simple examples of “birds and bees”, “necessary and sufficient”, “eat and run” etc.
These parallel phrases may appear in GMAT sentence correction questions but these are never the focus of the question.
The focus of these sentence correction questions is complex parallelism: the parallelism of two phrases (i.e. participial phrases, gerund phrases, infinitive phrases, or substantive clauses).
GMAT usually incorporates complex questions such that P and Q are phrases or clauses wherein each of them will be found accompanying a long modifying phrase.
This complexity makes it difficult to look for parallel elements.
Tips for correcting parallelism issues in GMAT sentence correction sentences
- Focus on the markers of parallelism- Two parallel elements are always joined by either single coordinating conjunction or by a pair of correlative conjunctions. There are three coordinating conjunctions that by themselves can join parallel phrases are “and”, “or” and “but”. The conjunction “and” can join two elements such as P and Q or even three elements such as P, Q, and R. In such a case the format shall be taken as the following [first term] [comma] [second term] [comma] “and” third term. Take a look at the example below for a better understanding.
The Government responded to inflation by raising the primary lending rate, limiting the supply of money, and setting up cost of living adjustments for people on a fixed income.
We know that some parallelism is into play when the word “and” is spotted.
Along with this, there are two sets of words which like the coordinate conjunctions can by themselves align two elements in a parallel manner are “as well as” and “rather than”.
Let two sentences be P and Q.
The most common correlative conjunctions that appear in GMAT 2021 are-
- not P but Q
- not only P but also Q
- either P or Q
- both P and Q
Candidates should be careful between “not only …but” and “not but…. also” which is a very common sentence correction mistake pattern that test-takers very frequently make.
- Read and focus on the paragraph/problem – Reading the problem carefully will help the candidate to identify a question pertaining to parallelism.
Consider the following question from among the GMAT TUTOR bank of 5000 GMAT practice questions–
Practitioners of many ancient world religions, like their modern-day counterparts, believed human life to be a term for the preparation of the soul for another form of existence in the afterlife rather than seeing existence as the random but brief result of biological procreation.
The question that arises here is how can the same be recognized as a question on parallelism?
The most important words in the above-stated paragraph are “rather than”. Hence these two elements should be characterized by the same parallel structure.
Parallelism demands that the elements that are parallel should have similar parts of speech (e.g.- nouns, adjectives, verbs,) or even sometimes concentrates on the structure (e.g.- modifying phrases, clauses, etc.
In the above-stated question, the first part says “believed human life to be a term”.
After “rather than”, the structure is maintained by “seeing”.
These two structures can at once be characterized as not parallel. “Believed” is a conjugated verb and “seeing” is an unconjugated verb that acts as modifying phrases.
- Go through all the options carefully to find the solution- Consider this option:
that human life was a term for the preparation of the soul for another form of existence in the afterlife rather than a random and
Now the question is how did we pick this to be the correct option?
“To be” changes to the conjugated verb “was” and is seen on both sides of the sentences. These two sides are “a term” and “a random and brief result”.
Herein, term and result are nouns and therefore the option is parallel.
It must also be kept in mind that the adjectives before “result” are not considered to be a part of the parallel structure because they simply describe the result as a noun, which is thus the second element of parallelism.
In other words, there must be present a list of two or more elements or structures that perform the function of equating, comparing, or contrasting elements such as e.g.- “not only… but also”, “rather than”, “as…as” etc. requires all the elements to be parallel.
- Make an effort to learn something extra- Prior to moving onto the next question, the candidates must make an effort to consciously learn as much as they can from the question. It can be observed from the question given above that it contains the words “rather but” while the correct option has “random and”. Herein it can be inferred that the word “But” introduces a contrast. This is where the candidate must question themselves if the question requires a contrast or not. Therefore, the words “random” and “brief” do not indicate a contrast; this is the reason they are joined by “and” over “but”.
While looking for the correct answer, many examinees do not go through the other options and actually try to identify why the same is in fact wrong.
Apart from identifying the one correct answer so many other things can also be learned from a particular question.
This is very helpful, as one may not always know the correct answer but can find out the same by discarding the flawed options.
- The mistake of logic and false parallelism- When it comes to sentence correction parallelism problems in GMAT 2021, many candidates tend to make them more sophisticated mistake patterns regarding the GMAT sentence correction problems. This is known as false parallelism: which is pairing two elements that grammatically and superficially seem to correlate but are logically different from each other. An example of the same is given below-
Last night, I made dinner using fresh vegetables, with my friend Chris, and with a sense of profound satisfaction.
This might appear to be parallel on a superficial level, as three accurately framed prepositional phrases beginning with the word “with”.
The grammar in these three phrases also seems to be correct. However, when it comes to logic this sentence is a blunder.
This sentence tries to put into parallel three completely different prepositional phrases having different meanings using “with”. –
- Materials- “with fresh vegetables”
- Manner- “with a profound sense of satisfaction”
- Accompaniment- “with my friend Chris”.
Keeping these factors in mind will prevent the candidates from making the commonest of mistakes and master the parallelism and sentence completion section.