{"id":13461,"date":"2017-01-11T08:04:52","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T13:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grockit.com\/gmat\/?p=190"},"modified":"2020-09-11T20:42:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T20:42:29","slug":"gmat-sentence-corrections-parallels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/gmat\/gmat-sentence-corrections-parallels\/","title":{"rendered":"GMAT Sentence Corrections: Parallels"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nThere\u2019s an old saying that mentions \u201ccomparing apples to oranges.\u201d\u00a0 The implication of that saying is that it is undesirable to compare dissimilar things in real life. For instance, comparing the score improvements of two students preparing for the GMAT would be comparing apples to oranges, particularly if, for instance, one student was an experienced test-taker with the luxury of devoting several hours a day to studying, while the other was new to standardized testing and had many other time commitments that impeded studying. You want to compare apples to apples\u2014instead of comparing your improvements to someone else\u2019s, compare your scores only to your past performances. That\u2019s your best gauge of progress, and it prevents you from comparing your \u201capples\u201d to someone else\u2019s \u201coranges.\u201d
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Example 1<\/h3>
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\nThis theory is just as important in GMAT sentence corrections as it is in real life. When items are being compared, they must be \u201capples to apples,\u201d or parallel. For instance, take a look at the following example of a comparison:
\nUnlike a standard mortgage, which allows the home-buyer to finance her purchase through a bank, land contract purchasers are financed directly by the property seller.<\/em>
\nThe sentence as written compares \u201ca standard mortgage\u201d to \u201cland contract purchasers.\u201d Mortgages are things, and purchasers are people or entities; this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. In order to correct it, we should put the items being compared into parallel form, like this:
\nUnlike a standard mortgage, which allows the home-buyer to finance her purchase through a bank, land contracts provide financing directly from the property seller.<\/em>
\nParallelism isn\u2019t just about putting items in similar forms\u2014they must also, as much as possible, be in similar numbers. You shouldn\u2019t compare \u201ca standard mortgage\u201d to \u201cland contracts\u201d when we can compare it to \u201ca land contract.\u201d So the final, truly parallel sentence will look like this:
\nUnlike a standard mortgage, which allows the home-buyer to finance her purchase through a bank, a land contract provides financing directly from the property seller.<\/em>
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Example 2<\/h3>
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\nIt\u2019s not just items being compared that need to be parallel, though; items in a list must also be in parallel forms, and you\u2019re actually more likely to see this kind of parallelism tested on the GMAT. Here\u2019s an example:
\nSelf-contained housing developments are significantly different from traditional neighborhoods, as their organization drastically reduces traffic from outside sources, encourages a higher level of uniformity in building construction and landscaping, and caused the emergence of nearby shopping areas.<\/em>
\nThe list in this sentence describes ways that self-contained housing developments differ from traditional neighborhoods. The first task is to check to make sure that the listed items are in similar forms. Each of the phrases in the list begins with a verb: \u201creduces,\u201d \u201cencourages,\u201d and \u201ccaused.\u201d But again, just being in the same form isn\u2019t enough; here you\u00a0need to make sure that, as long as revision doesn\u2019t have a confusing impact on the meaning of the sentence, the verbs are all in the same tense. There\u2019s no reason to think that \u201cnearby shopping areas\u201d emerged in the past but have ceased to do so now, since one can assume that housing developments are still being built. Therefore, the sentence can be revised into the following parallel format:
\nSelf-contained housing developments are significantly different from traditional neighborhoods, as their organization drastically reduces traffic from outside sources, encourages a higher level of uniformity in building construction and landscaping, and causes the emergence of nearby shopping areas.<\/em>
\nThat one letter difference, from \u201ccaused\u201d to \u201ccauses,\u201d is the difference between getting a question right and getting it wrong. So what can you, the intrepid test-taker, do to ensure that parallelism isn\u2019t a problem for you on the GMAT?
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