Question

which sentence has the strongest parallelism? select the best answer.

answer

• the field of biology may involve the study of dna, chemistry, and the environment.
• the field of biology may touch on dna, studying a little chemistry is common, and the environment.
• the field of biology may involve studying dna, a little chemistry, and will teach knowledge of the environment.

Explanation:

🆕 New Concept Discovered: Parallel Structure
Matching grammatical forms in a list.

Step 1: Understand Parallelism

Parallelism (or parallel structure) means using the same pattern of words to show that two or more ideas have the same level of importance. This is done by matching grammatical forms in a list (e.g., all nouns, all gerunds, or all clauses).

Step 2: Analyze the Options

Let's look at the list of items in each sentence to see if they share the same grammatical structure:

• Option 1: "The field of biology may involve the study of DNA, chemistry, and the environment."
• List items:

1. "DNA" (noun)
2. "chemistry" (noun)
3. "the environment" (noun phrase)

• Analysis: All three items are simple nouns/noun phrases. They match grammatically, creating a balanced and parallel structure.

• Option 2: "The field of biology may touch on DNA, studying a little chemistry is common, and the environment."
• List items:

1. "DNA" (noun)
2. "studying a little chemistry is common" (independent clause)
3. "the environment" (noun phrase)

• Analysis: The items do not match. Mixing a noun, a full clause, and another noun phrase breaks the parallel structure.

• Option 3: "The field of biology may involve studying DNA, a little chemistry, and will teach knowledge of the environment."
• List items:

1. "studying DNA" (gerund phrase)
2. "a little chemistry" (noun phrase)
3. "will teach knowledge of the environment" (verb phrase)

• Analysis: The items do not match. Mixing a gerund phrase, a noun phrase, and a verb phrase breaks the parallel structure.

Step 3: Identify the Best Answer

Option 1 is the only sentence where all items in the list share the same grammatical form (nouns/noun phrases), making it the sentence with the strongest parallelism.

Answer:

The field of biology may involve the study of DNA, chemistry, and the environment.