I think the parallelism is between the two elements in the second clause, the author probably thinking that the "its" needed to be given to both elements. The same lack of parallelism could be said about the "of the college" belonging to both conjoined elements in the preferred version (C). My revision was identical to yours, but I didn't send it in when I saw your reply. At risk of being overly pedantic, I offer the following comments:
1) She was president of the college for some time.
2) Many changes occurred during that time.
3) Those changes increased the educational quality of the college.
4) Those changes increased effectiveness.
though this is still not fully informative. Nevertheless, I think that to maintain strict parallelism these concepts would have to be retained in parallel, so that we would have something like:
E) During the time that she was president of the college many changes occurred which increased its educational strengths, in both quality and effectiveness.
Geoff,
There are no passives in the first clause or any of the variants of the second clause. The verbs have non-agentive subjects, but the clauses are all active. However, I agree, as I posted earlier, that all three alternatives are poor. And I'm not sure why parallelism is an issue in this test question. A semicolon doesn't demand parallelism between the two clauses it links; although that may be a good thing in some cases, it's not clear that it is here.
Herb
>While "C" seems fine to me, I don't understand why "B" is deficient.
Actually, they're all deficient! As in most of these idiotic tests, the
real answer is "none of the above."
I suppose that "c" does provide a modicum of parallelism by creating a
prepositional phrase (the "effectiveness of what") that weakly parallels
"educational quality". However, the construction is still out of whack
(technical!
term t
here!). It would seem more effective to simplify the
sentence. In addition, although passive verbs are not automatically wrong,
this one is certainly suspect. How about, "She improved the quality and
effectiveness of the college during her presidency."? This is still much
too vague for my tastes, but it does solve a variety of the problems.
Geoff Layton
The correct answer is given as "C." My daughter's workbook
>notes that "B" is not parallel; however, I thought that in seeking to
>determine whether parallel structure exists in a sentence, one need not pay
>attention to items that modify the elements that are equal in placement,
>importance and/or function. Thus, regarding choice "B," I don't think that
>it matters that "its educational" modifies "quality," but that
>"effectiveness" has no modifier. Thank you for your help.
>
>Many change!
s occur
red while she was president of the college, and they
>increased its educational quality as well as effectiveness.
>
>A) college, and they increased its educational quality as well as
>effectiveness
>B) college; these changes increased its educational quality and
>effectiveness
>C) college; these changes increased both the educational quality and
>effectiveness of the college
>
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