THIS IS MY first BLOG in a series about the POWER of PARALLEL STRUCTURE
Parallel Structure is a powerful tool. If you master the skill of using parallel structure when speaking and writing you can gain many benefits:
You can add more details into a sentence
You can make long sentences easy to read
You can compose more professional reports for university classes
You can increase your IELTS band score for grammar in both the speaking and writing sections
Notice the points above: They are organized into parallel structure. Another way to put it would be like this:
You can
add more details into a sentence
make long sentences easy to read
compose more professional reports for university classes
increase your IELTS band score for grammar in both the speaking and writing section
WHEN WRITING A LIST USE PARALLEL STRUCTURE
JUST
REMEMBER
TO
KEEP
THE
SAME
SENTENCE
STRUCTURE
When writing a list in ENGLISH, the most accepted way to punctuate it is:1, 2 and 3
For example:
She likes pizza, hamburgers and chips.
(ie) she likes NOUN, NOUN and NOUN
NOTE: It's OK to add compliments, especially in the last item:
She likes pizza, hamburgers and chips with lots of ketchup on top.
Let's look at our first example of how to use this in IELTS WRITING task 1:
Imagine we want to describe more than one change on this graph.
We can use parallel structure.
BY the way, this graph is talking about a fictional person called Killah Kasanova
The number of girlfriends increased gradually between the ages of 18 and 22, then rose sharply at the age of 24 and remained steady for the next two years.
NOTICE the pattern: SUBJECT + VERB + Compliment (usually an adverb). (then keep it PARALLEL)
Verbs are BLUE, compliments are RED
You could add in the data like this:
The number of girlfriends increased gradually from one to eight between the ages of 18 and 22, then rose sharply to twelve at the age of 24 and remained steady for the next two years.
Another way to use parallel structure for the same idea would be like this:
There was a gradual increase in the number of girlfriends between the ages of 18 and 22, followed by a sharp rise at age 24 and a period of stability during the next two years.
Notice the pattern: THERE WAS + (adjective) NOUN or NOUN + compliment
NOUNS are purple and Adjectives and compliments are orange
Notice that FOLLOWED BY is used to join the ideas in this structure.
EXERCISE: CAN YOU write about 2 or more changes in the chart above using parallel structure??
Post answers in the comments...