时间:2018-12-01 作者:英语课 分类:英语语法视频


英语课

by Mignon Fogarty 


Friends and family often ask me to review their résumés before they send them to potential employers, and the most common error I see is that people fail to use parallel construction in lists of accomplishments 1 or responsibilities.

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How to Write a Better Résumé

You probably did lots of things you want to highlight for a potential employer. For example maybe in your last job you were responsible for making coffee, decoration hanging, and you ran the office football pool. That's sure to impress them, right?

It will impress them more if you change it so your three grueling duties are written using parallel construction. It's a mishmash the way it is now, the verbs are in different forms and in different places, and the last part (you ran the office football pool) is a whole clause. We can clean it up by making each part start with a gerund—an “ing” form of a verb:

I was responsible for making coffee, hanging decorations, and running the office football pool.

There, much better, each part is a gerund phrase. They match.

Start each item in a list with the same verb form or article.

More Ways Using Parallel Construction Helps You Write a Better Résumé

Although the most common errors I see are using different verb forms or phrase forms, occasionally people will jumble 2 their articles or prepositions.

Here's a sentence that could be better:

My team won best complainers, the most likely to leave early, and least likely to turn off the lights when we leave.

The problem is the article “the” in front of “most likely to leave early.” The first and last items in the list don't have an article in front of them, so to keep your list parallel, you need to either remove the “the” from the middle item or put an article in front of everything.

My team won best complainers, most likely to leave early, and least likely to turn off the lights when we leave.

My team was voted the best complainers, the most likely to leave early, and the least likely to turn off the lights when we leave.

Both versions are correct. You could write it either way; the important thing is that each list item is either bare or preceded by an article.

Again, they match. You want your socks to match when you go to an interview. Make sure you get that interview by double-checking that your list items match.

What Should You Capitalize on a Résumé?

And on a note completely unrelated to parallel construction, the second most common mistake I see on résumés is people capitalizing words willy nilly.

We capitalize words because they are proper nouns—the name of something. That means you capitalize the official name of your department, but you don't capitalize the name of your position when you use it in a sentence. You also don't capitalize words that describe your department, a project you worked on, or your coworkers.

As a salesperson 3 in the Department of Desserts, I handled the gumdrop and jelly bean accounts at the request of the marketing 4 group.

The only words in that sentence that should be capitalized are “department” and “desserts” because “Department of Desserts” is the official name of the department, which makes it a proper noun. There's no reason to capitalize “salesperson,” “gumdrop,” “jelly bean,” or “marketing,” but I see people do it all the time on résumés. Capitalizing unnecessary words doesn't make them seem more important; it just makes it seem like you don't know how to use the language.

 



1 accomplishments
n.造诣;完成( accomplishment的名词复数 );技能;成绩;成就
  • It was one of the President's greatest accomplishments. 那是总统最伟大的成就之一。
  • Among her accomplishments were sewing,cooking,playing the piano and dancing. 她的才能包括缝纫、烹调、弹钢琴和跳舞。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
2 jumble
vt.使混乱,混杂;n.混乱;杂乱的一堆
  • Even the furniture remained the same jumble that it had always been.甚至家具还是象过去一样杂乱无章。
  • The things in the drawer were all in a jumble.抽屉里的东西很杂乱。
3 salesperson
n.售货员,营业员,店员
  • A salesperson works in a shop.售货员在商店工作。
  • Vanessa is a salesperson in a woman's wear department.凡妮莎是女装部的售货员。
4 marketing
n.行销,在市场的买卖,买东西
  • They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
  • He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。
学英语单词
'toons
absolute mean deviation
aggregometer
Agropoli
air-cooled graphite moderated reactor
aldehydic hydrogen
allomerisms
apex of earth motion
apodized aperture
beat-box
Bidens coronata
branded goods
broad-bean plants
Bulsār
candelabras
cheque board scan
cismadinone
Cleveland steamers
cmos gate array
contiguous sea area
cotton core
covariants
dahira obliquifascia
Danjuro
darkness adaption
directed set
divine-mind
dorsal tegmental nucleus
economic recession
epidote amphibolite
femtowebers
framework of fault
get too big for one's boots
hard right
Harmsworth, Harold Sidney
high-moisture grain silage
housekeeping digit
hydrofine
hydroiodination
industrial radiology
Itard-Cholewa sign
kaga
Kovel'
latricia
let something slide
manitology
meristoderm
Montsec
neutral position of brush
NOESY
nondefinable
nonstructural
observe measure s
periodontologists
physical shape
pincloth
polydelphous
polymorphic transition
poure
pure space science
quality circles
qualling
quantum step
Raphidia
recall of witness
regulize
reinforced concrete fence
renal embolism
reticulated veins
round mallet
scifier
selective conversion
self-murderer
sensitive plate processing
shaker convyer
sheet-ice
side tilt car
slimy waste material
small business management
smoothing by free hand
soil depleting crop
solar blind photomultiplier
speed matching
ST_easy-and-difficult_causing-difficulties-for-oneself-or-others
state correspondence error
strip a peg
super highway
tackle pulley
tar cooler box
telegraph selector
the book of fate
thread mill
three-putts
tighter than the barkon a tree
trisomy 18 syndrome
undivined
uniflow cooler
value insured rail traffic
wall of sound
whoopee do
Yemurtla
zookeep