Examkin

Question

Difficulty: EasyParallel Structure

To prepare for the complex laboratory experiment, the students were instructed to calibrate the scale, clean the glass beakers, and they must sterilize the workspace.

Which choice best maintains the parallel structure of the sentence?

  1. A
    NO CHANGE
  2. B
    sterilizing
  3. sterilizeAnswer
  4. D
    sterilized

Answer

sterilize
The sentence presents a list of three tasks: 'to calibrate the scale,' 'clean the glass beakers,' and the final task. The first two items use bare infinitives ('calibrate' and 'clean') linked to the initial preposition 'to'. To maintain parallel structure, the third item must also be a bare infinitive. The option containing 'sterilize' correctly completes this parallel series.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the list of actions in the sentence.
The list contains 'to calibrate the scale', 'clean the glass beakers', and 'they must sterilize the workspace'.
Parallel structure requires items in a series to share the same grammatical form.
2
Determine the grammatical structure of the non-underlined list items.
The verbs 'calibrate' and 'clean' are base form verbs (bare infinitives) connected to the shared preposition 'to'.
This establishes the structure that the third item must match.
3
Select the option that matches the base form verb structure.
The verb 'sterilize' is the base form that matches 'calibrate' and 'clean'.
Using 'sterilize' completes the parallel infinitive structure.

Key Concept

Parallel Structure
Rate this question

Topics

Parallel Structure

More questions from this topic