Name: Date: Identify Parallel Structure
1. Read this excerpt from an article about pets and heat safety by Laura Blue. Underline two lists
that use parallel parts of speech. (Hint: They both use nouns.)
Watch for these signs: heavy panting, collapse or staggering, drooling, vomiting, lethargy,
glassy eyes, rapid heartbeat and, naturally (since the condition is caused by overheating),
unusually high body temperature. Very old pets, very young ones and the overweight are
at the greatest risk, and certain breeds with short noses—think pugs, boxers and bulldogs
among dogs, and Persians and exotics among cats—will have more trouble with the heat
because they can’t pant as well, according to Petfinder​.com.
—from “6 Ways to Keep Your Pets Safe in the Heat”
2. Read this excerpt from an Op-Ed piece by Joel Achenbach. Underline the two sets of parallel
phrases. (Hint: One set is prepositional phrases; the other set is noun phrases.)
3. Read this excerpt from a short story by Nicholasa Mohr. Underline the two sets of parallel
phrases.
He was nine when he became head of the household. Sometimes he would get work
in the fields or at the sugar refinery, working from sun-up to sundown, bringing home
twenty-five, maybe thirty cents a day. . . . Other days he would work chopping wood,
running errands, and cleaning the hog pens, to be paid in food; but enough so that they
wouldn’t starve at home.
—from “A Time with a Future (Carmela)”
4. Read this excerpt from a speech by President John F. Kennedy. Underline the three sets of
parallel clauses.
The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and
equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be
treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to
the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot
vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and
free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of
his skin changed and stand in his place? Whom among us would then be content with
the counsels of patience and delay?
—from “Report to the American People on Civil Rights, 11 June 1963”
Larchmont, NY. www.eyeoneducation.com. All rights reserved.
Bad Information does not happen by accident. It is promulgated. The sources are increasingly sophisticated. Today, almost everyone has advanced technology for disseminating
data, from Web sites to phone banks to cable TV infomercials; everyone has a private public relations staff and a private media relations staff and a private Scientific Advisory Panel
to lend “expert” authority to implausible assertions.
—from “The Age of Bad Information”
144
Reproduced with permission from Davis, Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans: Ready-to-Use Resources, 9-12.
Copyright 2013 Routledge
All rights reserved. www.routledge.com
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5. Read this excerpt from an article on kids and sleep by Alexandra Sifferlin. Look at the underlined items in the list. How could you revise the items so that they all have parallel structure?
On the lines that follow, rewrite the list to show parallel structure.
Researchers assessed children’s sleep quality by using portions of a standard questionnaire
measuring how often kids have trouble falling asleep, their nightmare frequency, how
many times they wake up during the night, their difficulty waking up in the morning and
how tired they are during the day. The questionnaires were administered at the start of the
study and again at 6, 12 and 18 months. At the start of the study, there weren’t any significant differences between the two groups in terms of sleep problems or TV habits. The
most common problem kids had was trouble falling asleep, with 38% of kids taking more
than 20 minutes to fall asleep at least a couple of nights a week.
—from “Stick to Sesame Street: Violent TV Disrupts Kids’ Sleep”
Your revision of the list:
Larchmont, NY. www.eyeoneducation.com. All rights reserved.
145
Reproduced with permission from Davis, Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans: Ready-to-Use Resources, 9-12.
Copyright 2013 Routledge
All rights reserved. www.routledge.com
00i-188_CCLL_9-12_4p.indb 145
9/11/12 3:57 PM