welcome back in today's video I'm presenting a grammar point that will help you be a better
writer in English it's parallel forms in this short video i'll tell you what parallel forms are
and why they're important and then we'll do a practice and i'll show you the answers
this video will help you understand and correct a sentence like this that has a mistake
the symptoms of Covid-19 are a cough fever and tired so we'll look at that sentence in a moment
but first let me tell you what parallel forms are well the word parallel refers to two lines that
are like this these are lines that are the same so they never meet or intersect we often use the word
parallel to talk about things that are the same but in different places so we use this word to
describe the forms that we use in a sentence it'll be clear when we look at an example in a moment
but when we don't pay attention to parallel forms sometimes our sentences can be awkward
or strange and hard to understand and this is especially important when you write an essay
or a cover letter for a job remember my example above about Covid-19 the sentence was
symptoms of Covid-19 are a cough fever and tired so a native speaker will never say this sentence
because a native speaker has control of forms of words the word cough is a noun fever is a noun
but tired is an adjective so those three words do not have parallel forms if we have two nouns
cough fever we also need to have a noun for the third one so how can we fix this sentence
we can change tired to a noun form tiredness ness is a noun suffix that we can use to make nouns
but the word tiredness is not very common so that's really not the best answer
we could also change tired to the gerund feeling tired and that's not wrong it works
because feeling tired is a noun phrase but it's not the best solution because the other ones cough
and fever are nouns but they don't have gerunds so in this case we would have like noun noun
and then a noun phrase with a gerund again it's not wrong but it's not the best solution the best
answer here would be to use the noun form of tired which is a word that you might not know fatigue so
let's say the sentence again symptoms of Covid-19 are a cough fever and fatigue fatigue is a common
noun that we use especially in this situation and it means to feel tired but it's a noun so now we
have noun noun and noun so let's see some examples of sentences with correct parallel forms and
all of these sentences are about the same topic which is language learning you know that you are
truly fluent in a language when you can express yourself easily and when you begin to dream in it
you can learn a second language at a college at home or in the country where it is spoken
writing an essay in English is both difficult and interesting people can learn vocabulary
easily by not only listening to music but also reading for at least 10 minutes a day
you can improve your pronunciation by listening to native speakers
imitating their speech and learning the sounds of the target language
now let's take a look at some common mistakes in parallel forms
there are three good ways to improve your pronunciation
to listen to native speakers imitating their speech and learn the sounds of the target language
people can learn vocabulary easily by not only listening to music
but also read for at least 10 minutes a day
you can learn a second language at home at college or the country where it is spoken
you know that you are truly fluent in a language
when you can express yourself easily and beginning to dream in it
so let's practice pause the video rewrite the sentences with correct parallel forms
and when you're ready press play again and check your answers with me
there are three ways to improve your pronunciation listening to native speakers imitating their
speech and learning the sounds of English so here we want to have three parallel forms
and in the example we had a verb with two and then we had a gerund imitating and then we had the verb
learn and so we had three different forms and that sentence doesn't work so we need to use
three parallel forms here so in my example uh correction I'm using gerund gerund and
gerund let's look at the next one people can learn vocabulary easily by not only listening to music
but also read for at least 10 minutes a day so here we have two ways to improve vocabulary
and those are not parallel forms because in the first one I use a gerund and the second one I
use a verb read so we need to correct that the best way would be to use a gerund in both of them
people can learn vocabulary easily by not only listening to music but also reading for at least
10 minutes a day let's look at the next one you can learn English at home at college or
in the country where it is spoken so the correction here we're going to use prepositional
phrase prepositional phrase prepositional phrase in the first one we have the preposition at second
one at and in the third one in we can't use at for the third one because we don't use at with
countries so for the third one we need to use the preposition in you know that you are truly fluent
in a language when you can express yourself easily and beginning to dream in it so here we have two
different forms so the sentence doesn't work if we use when before the first one we need to use
the same structure in the second one and remember that with when that's going to be a clause right
when you can express yourself easily so we have a subject you and verb can express so in the second
one we want to do the same thing so we can say you know that you are truly fluent in a language when
you can express yourself easily and when you begin to dream in it another thing that we could do here
is that we could use when you before the first one and then the parallel forms could be two verbs
you know that you are truly fluent in a language when you can express yourself easily
and begin to dream in it that works because the when you um is for both of them
when you do two things my final tip for you is to be especially careful about parallel forms when
you write a thesis statement for an essay or a main idea sentence in a cover letter for a job
because often in those sentences we are listing two or three things that we're going to talk about
in the rest of the essay or letter we can use this in a cover letter when you apply for a job
in this case you would have a main idea sentence that would tell maybe two or three reasons
why you would be a good person for that job or why they should hire you you might repeat
this sentence at the end of the cover letter to summarize or sum up the reasons that they should
hire you so let's look at an example in this case you're applying for a job to be a language teacher
I would be a good fit for the teaching position because of my experience education
and because I love learning languages so here we have three reasons but we don't have parallel
forms because we have a noun experience noun education and then a clause because I love
learning languages so how can we change this to be correct well if we have two nouns then let's make
the third one a noun too instead of saying because I love learning languages we could use the noun
my love of learning languages so let's try it again I would be a good fit for the teaching
position because of my experience education and love of learning languages that's it for today
but let's practice one more time in the comments below let me know your answer to this question
what are the three best ways to learn English at home and if you found this video helpful
please give it a like and subscribe every like subscribe and share really helps me to grow my
channel so I can reach more English learners like you thank you so much and take care!