Dinesh654 wrote:
Hello experts,
Although I know why other options are wrong, I am still having issues with A.
First of all, as well as is not a parallelism marker.
SO, how can "as well as" do the job for a parallelism marker (conjunction)?
meaning, how can a critique and a vision can be made parallel by using as well as?
"X as well as Y" doesn't have to obey totally rigid strictures of parallelism because "X as well as Y" is what might better be called a "not-quite-parallel structure".
Its fundamental meaning requires X and Y to be comparable—so, in other words, the 'X' and the 'Y' should still be constructions that
COULD theoretically be put in parallel (like all properly comparable things)—but sets them up in context with unequal standing / priority levels.
Specifically, "X as well as Y" means... "X and Y", but specifically in contexts where "Y" is something that's
already known/typical/expected/standard/etc whereas "X" is something
NEW/UNEXPECTED/SURPRISING/UNANTICIPATED/etc.[/b]
So, e.g.,
Annette, a dating coach, helps her clients achieve better self-awareness as well as matching them with potential partners.Here, Annette is a professional dating coach, so Y = "matching [clients] with potential partners" is the basic job description that anybody would expect her to do. But X = helping clients develop better self-awareness is something above and beyond her basic job description.
Do you see why this sentence would be markedly WORSE if we just wrote it with "and"? It wouldn't become false, and it wouldn't strictly become
wrong, but "X and Y" would be much less appropriate here because of the differing expectation levels for the X and the Y.
Having said all that—If you CAN make the two parts in "X as well as Y" parallel, you certainly should! Thus the structure of A is ideal.
(The sentence about Annette, above, has imperfect parallelism—there's a verb on the left side, but an __ing form on the right side. If THIS kind of thing ends up being CORRECT, you should NOT see any
better parallel matching in any of the WRONG answers.)
Pl let me know if all of this makes sense!