Last night one of the members of your wagon train failed to make his family fire in a trench and embers blew out and started a prairie fire. You and the other members of the wagon train spent all night and most of the day fighting the fire.
Read the Rules of Parrallelism and answer the questions below:
With the -ing form (gerund) of words:
Parallel: Mary likes hiking, swimming, and bicycling.
With infinitive phrases:
Parallel: Mary likes to hike, to swim, and to ride a bicycle.
OR
Mary likes to hike, swim, and ride a bicycle.
Do not mix forms
Example 1
Not Parallel: Mary likes hiking, swimming, and to ride a bicycle.
Example 2
Not Parallel: The production manager was asked to write his report quickly, accurately, and in a detailed manner.
Parallel: The production manager was asked to write his report quickly, accurately, and thoroughly.
Example 3
Not Parallel: The teacher said that he was a poor student because he waited until the last minute to study for the exam, completed his lab problems in a careless manner, and his motivation was low.
Parallel: The teacher said that he was a poor student because he waited until the last minute to study for the exam, completed his lab problems in a careless manner, and lacked motivation.
Rewrite the following sentences correctly:
Read and choose the correct answer. Write it in your notebook:
Phuong Tran has wit, charm, and she has an extremely pleasant personality.
Phuong Tran has wit, charm, and a pleasing personality.
He wanted three things out of college: to learn a skill, to make good friends, and to learn about life.
He wanted three things out of college: to learn a skill, to make good friends, and learning about life.
Coach Espinoza was a brilliant strategist, a caring mentor, and a wise friend.
Coach Espinoza was a brilliant strategist, a caring mentor, and friend.
Vivid Verbs!
In order to make your writing more interesting, good writers use vivid verbs to help the reader make a great mind movie.
Vivid verbs are those actions words that you can either picture in your mind or you can actually do.
Think about it! Vivid verbs give your writing meaning and description. Here are some examples to think about: jump, strike, swim, climb, slurp, belch, slam, slump, squirm.
If you can stand up and do it, then it's a vivid verb!!
GET THE IDEA?
The more descriptive your vivid verb is, the better mind-movie the reader can make.
Here are some non-examples (words that ARE NOT vivid verbs) to think about: is, are, was, were, have, had. These are verbs. But they are the kind we don't want to use.
These boring non-mind-movie-making verbs are what we call "Tired Verbs."
Why are they tired? They are absolutely worn out from being used over and over and over again.
Students love these tired verbs so much that they often write entire essays with just these verbs. How dreadfully boring!!
When students use tired verbs, it makes your teacher kick over her chair, snap her pens in two, and screech like a banshee at the top of her lungs. (Not really, but it was a good excuse to use a sentence with vivid verbs. Can you find all three?)
