Half the time spent on the question would be to understand that statement. This language never fails to surprise me, in the wrong way.

Dana explains why she didn't consider the "after some preliminary air drying or sun drying" and skipped to the "they are laid..." in the video starting at about 13:30. As she says, when we're looking at parallelism, we need to think about the key components that the author is trying to list. In this case, that's the components of the most extensively used method of building houses using mud or clay bricks. Check out that part of the video, and please feel free to ask any further questions if that doesn't fully answer your questions!

Meaning of the sentence will guide you. Example- "Running is Fun". Here "Running" is acting as a Noun.

The "but" in question 2 is just used to connect two clauses. Consider this example: "I would like to bake a fluffy cake, but my creations always emerge from the oven with brick-like qualities." Here, we have one subject verb pair ("I" and ""would like") in the first clause, and another pair ("creations" and "emerge") in the second clause. Because the "but" is just used as a conjunction between clauses, we're not really looking for strict parallelism as we would with a list within a sentence. Similarly, the "but" in question 2 separates two clauses: before the but, we have a subject of "several ways" and a verb of "are," and after we have a new subject of "method" and a new verb of "has been." There's nothing more that's worth investigating with the "but," since it's just a conjunction. The "and," on the other hand, separates the pieces of a list, so that's why we need to look for parallelism there. (C) gives us a really nice parallel structure with "to form" and "to lay." I hope that helps!

It's not a video, but you could start with the articles linked below. They should help you differentiate between verbs, modifiers, and nouns when it comes to -ing and -ed words. I hope that helps! -ing words article: gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topic-of-the-week-that-ing-word-probably-isn-t-a-239780.html -ed words article: gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topic-of-the-week-5-15-17-fun-with-ed-words-240280.html

@@GMATNinjaTutoring Thank you so much! Deeply touched by your quick responses!

Great question! While placing "his envisioning" parallel to "his early experiments" might clear up the pronoun issue, it creates a different problem with meaning in the sentence. The stem would end with "Humphry Davy presented the results of..." which doesn't make any sense with that second leg: "Humphry Davy presented the results of... his envisioning of a new chemistry." Huh? It makes much more sense for "a critique" to be parallel with "a vision," as we see in (A). Stay tuned for a full video on meaning and parallelism, which will be coming soon!

Glad that you're enjoying the series, Mokshaa! Sorry for the slow response. Words ending in "-ing" can do several different things in a sentence. Check out the following video and article to learn how to work with "-ing" words on the GMAT: Video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iNOUo71kxpvLp6s.html Article: gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topic-of-the-week-that-ing-word-probably-isn-t-a-239780.html I hope that helps a bit!

Yes same doubt i have

I might be wrong, but I think because we have "and act/acting as a buffer", the key is to ask what could act as a buffer, and in this case clearly it is the breakwater. This means if we have "and act/acting as a buffer", the thing that needs to be parallel to act/acting needs to be after the idea of the breakwater has been introduced so it can also be something related to the breakwater. Another way to prove this more mechanically, is ask yourself if what you think could be parallel was made the second item in the list and the second item became the first, does it make sense. In the case for "building" as a possible parallel, the second item in the list as the first would read "The Army Corps of Engineers proposed acting as a buffer and building parallel to shore...." which clearly makes no sense

Poor dino.😔But at least it had a final meal?

"his" is possessive, and acts as an adjective, not a pronoun.

Sorry for the slow response, Karan! Yes, a noun can be parallel to a pronoun. Consider this sentence: "The only things my cat loves are tuna, milk, and herself." Here, the pronoun "herself" is parallel to the nouns "tuna" and "milk." All of these items are performing the same function in the sentence -- they're things that my self-centered cat loves. ;) I hope that helps!

For an "-ing" word to act as a verb, it needs to come with some form of "to be." For example, we could write "He is swimming" or "They were hiking". If you remove the "is" or the "were" from these examples, you can see that you no longer have a full verb: "He swimming" and "They hiking" simply don't work. For much more on how to determine the function of "-ing" words, check out this video (starting at the 2 minute mark): kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iNOUo71kxpvLp6s.html. I hope that helps a bit, and please accept our apologies for our slow response!