Correct Answer: mike’s boss spoke to the employees, asked for their feedback and then left the stage. when discussing parallel structure in writing, it is essential to ensure that similar elements are expressed in a consistent grammatical form. this enhances clarity and improves the flow of the text, making it easier for readers to follow the writer's ideas. let's examine the provided sentences to identify which one uses parallel structure effectively.
1. "mike was ignored, dismissed, and his coworkers taunted him."
- this sentence lacks parallelism. the verbs "was ignored" and "dismissed" are in passive form, but "his coworkers taunted him" shifts to an active form. for parallel structure, the sentence could be revised to: "mike was ignored, dismissed, and taunted by his coworkers."
2. "mike’s boss spoke to the employees, asked for their feedback, and then left the stage."
- this sentence correctly employs parallel structure. here, each action related to mike's boss is presented in a similar form: "spoke," "asked," and "left." each verb directly follows with the subject ("mike’s boss") performing the action, maintaining a consistent pattern.
3. "mike likes writing memos, distributing them and then he waits for feedback."
- this sentence breaks the parallel structure. the first two actions ("writing memos" and "distributing them") are gerunds, while the third action shifts to a different construction ("then he waits for feedback"). a better parallel version would be: "mike likes writing memos, distributing them, and waiting for feedback."
4. "mike went out for lunch, finished his work, and then his sister picked him up."
- this sentence also fails to maintain parallelism. the first two actions ("went out for lunch" and "finished his work") are structured with mike as the subject doing the actions, but the structure changes in the third part where the subject shifts from mike to his sister ("his sister picked him up"). to correct this, you might rephrase it to: "mike went out for lunch, finished his work, and got picked up by his sister."
the sentence that correctly expresses parallel ideas in a parallel form is: "mike’s boss spoke to the employees, asked for their feedback, and then left the stage." each component of the series maintains similar syntactic structure, making the sentence clear and effective in conveying a series of actions performed by mike’s boss. this adherence to parallel structure enhances readability and provides a smooth, logical flow of ideas.
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