Here's how to impress your English test examiner or lecturer.

You need to match your grammar. Look at this academic paragraph.

It appears to me from my many years of teaching that the students who fail might be going through personal issues, or have an underlying learning problem that has never been identified. The other reason that students fail is that very frustrating phenomenon of just being unlucky; for example, the topic in the exam is unfamiliar or very unexpected, the student is sick on the day of the exam, or something happens out of the blue to limit the students’ concentration.

Can you see the matching of grammar? This is called parallelism or parallel structures.

1. modal verb followed by BASE verb

   1. might --> BE / might --> HAVE

2. complete clauses

   1. the topic in the exam is unfamiliar or very unexpected

   2. the student is sick on the day of the exam

   3. something happens out of the blue ...

Can you see in both these examples that the writer has MATCHED the grammar - they have the same grammatical structure when there is a list of two or more items.

Let's look at a really easy example - when you are cooking.

Today I made a Christmas pudding. First, I mixed all the dry ingredients together. Then, I mixed two eggs and some cider. I joined these two mixtures together.

Now for something slightly more complex - an instructional text.

Every piano player wants to play pieces that astound their listeners and touch their hearts. You can do this by practising your scales and technical skills because you cannot play well if your fingers and muscles cannot move quickly enough. Also, you will play better by focusing on the parts that are most difficult. There is no point playing the whole piece when it's only bars 24-48 that are the weakest.

Notice the writer used the technique BY +-ing to match the two pieces of advice and make the writing easier for the English reader to follow.

Now, watch one or both of these videos to learn how and see more examples.