Dear Instructors - On a completely different note could you please let me know how much time should one take to answer this question. I marked the correct answer but took 2.28 mins? Is that OK?

Dear instuctor,


Just a follow up question. For " as a result of residential and Industrial development and of changes in farming practices"

Does the "of" before changes have to be there to keep parallelism ? or we can omiss it in some probelms?

Thank you so much!

No, this wouldn't work. "Like the grassy fields, etc. . . . ," creates a modifier. This modifier must be followed by the thing that is like the grassy fields.

So I could say this:

Like the grassy fields of the United States, the swamps of Florida are slowly disappearing.

If I wanted to squeeze the bit about the US into the opening modifier, it would get pretty long, but it would look like this:

Like the grassy fields and old pastures of the northeastern United States that the upland sandpiper needs for feeding and nesting when it returns in May after wintering in the Argentine Pampas, the bird itself is vanishing . . .

I think that's a bit much to pack in there, but at least the modifier beginning with "like" attaches itself to the appropriate noun.

So, quick recognition tip:

*If you have a noun modifier ("Like the grassy fields,"), it must immediately be followed by a noun.

If you see "Like X, in Y," it's wrong. Even the word "in" creates a mismatch. We need "Like X, Y . . ."

(a)
if you write "the sandpipers vanishing", then "sandpipers" is the subject ("vanishing" is a modifier describing that subject). the subject "sandpipers" doesn't agree with the singular verb "is".

GENERAL NOTE:
this sentence starts out with "like the grassy fields and old pastures...". the COMPARISON here is between those fields and pastures (which are disappearing) and the bird (which is also disappearing); therefore, to make this comparison valid, the next sentence MUST start with "the bird" or "the sandpiper". it can't start with anything else.

(c)
invalid comparison; this clause starts with "that the birds are vanishing...", rather than with the bird itself.
this choice is also hopelessly awkward, although it may take a native speaker's eye to see that.

(d)
invalid comparison; the subject of this clause is the sandpipers' vanishing, rather than the sandpiper itself.
the prepositional phrase "in the NE united states" is also inserted in a bad place; you generally don't want to create such occlusions in a comparison.

Hi Ron,

I am sorry but I couldn't follow your explanation.

OG says that the comparison is incorrect, which means that the construction like X,in the,Y is allowed? Please clarify this.

pls, help.
we can not compare apple and orange. why here can we compare "field " and "bird" ? pls help