Create the Situation
The first testing strategy we talked about was how to approach sentence combining questions. For example:
Choose the sentence that best combines the following two sentences.
I was listening to music on the radio.
I did not hear the doorbell ring.
A.
I was listening to music on the radio, but I did not hear the doorbell ring.
B.
I did not hear the doorbell ring while I was listening to music on the radio.
C.
I was listening to music on the radio, and I did not hear the doorbell ring.
D.
Listening to music on the radio, I did not hear the doorbell ring.
One effective way of approaching this question is to think of a situation where you would actually put those two sentences together. For example, what would happen if your dad was expecting an important package from FedEx and had asked you to sign for it when it came? But you had been listening to loud music and didn't hear the doorbell when the FedEx guy rang it? How would you explain yourself to you dad? The only answer that fits the situation is C.
I mean, who says "Listening to music on the radio, I did not hear the doorbell ring."? Weirdos, that's who.
Parallelism
We also had to figure out what was wrong with a few sentences. For example:
What part of the sentence below contains an error?
I plan on bringing/ corn, wild rice,/ some potatoes, / strawberries, and olives/ to the picnic.
A.
I plan on bringing
B.
corn, wild rice,
C.
some potatoes,
D.
strawberries, and olives
The error here is subtle. The way we find it is to play "One of these kids is not like the other." You know, the little segments in Sesame Street where three kids are doing one thing and the other kid is doing something different. We want to figure out what the most kids are doing and make sure the other kid is following suit.
In this case we can see that all the food items stand alone except for "some potatoes." "Some potatoes" violates parallelism.
Remember that parallel lines in math are lines that never intersect, they're absolutely straight. It's the same with grammar, the words in a list need to follow the same structure. So, since the other food items stand alone, we need to have the potatoes stand alone too in order to achieve parallelism.
The answer, therefore, is C.
