While Ethiopian Abebe Bikila is best known for his running accomplishments, as both the most famous barefoot Olympic champion
and the first athlete to defend an Olympic marathon title, also serving in the Ethiopian military in an elite infantry division tasked with protecting the emperor.
A. and the first athlete to defend an Olympic marathon title, also servingB. and the first athlete to defend an Olympic marathon title, he also servedC. and as the first athlete to defend an Olympic marathon title, he also served
D. and as the first athlete to defend an Olympic marathon title, also serving
E. as well as the first athlete to defend an Olympic marathon title, he had also servedThe options show that we need to determine the correct grammatical structure when pairing two clauses with the word “both” and the correct way to start the final clause in the sentence.
We’ll start with wording for the final clause. The sentence starts with “while,” which is a subordinate conjunction that is used in a dependent clause. The content between commas is a nonessential clause, so it can be ignored for the moment.
Since the sentence starts with a dependent clause, the rest of the sentence must be an independent clause, which requires a subject. Options A and D do not have an independent clause. The sentence would read “While Ethiopian Abebe Bikila is best known for his running accomplishments, also serving in the Ethiopian military in an elite infantry division tasked with protecting the emperor.” “Serving” cannot act as a verb without a helping verb, and there is no subject to start this independent clause. Options A and D cannot be the correct answers.
When pairing clauses together with the word “both,” parallel structure must be followed. If “both” is followed by a verb, preposition, adjective, or adverb then what comes after “and” needs to be the same part of speech as well. If there is a verb, preposition, adjective, or adverb in front of “both,” then what comes after “and” needs to work with that part of speech. The portion of the sentence that isn’t underlined includes “as both.” This means that whatever follows “and” needs to work with this “as.” Options C and D include an “as” after the “and,” which isn’t parallel with “as both.” They cannot be the correct answers.
Option E uses the phrase “as well as.” Idiomatically, this phrase should not be paired with “both.” Additionally, this option uses the past perfect tense (he had also served), and in this situation, the simple past tense (he also served) is all that is needed here. This cannot be the correct answer.
B is the correct option. _________________
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