<p>The main reasons students give for failing to participate in the political process (is that they have demanding assignments and work at) part-time jobs.</p>
<p>A. (is that they have demanding assignments and work at)
B. (are demanding assignments and they work at)
C. (are that they have demanding assignments and that they work at)
D. (is having demanding assignments and having to work at)
E. (are demanding assignments, in addition to working at)</p>
<p>At the beginning I thought it was E because the sentence was concise and quite clear. However the correct answer, according to the book, is C
are that they have demanding assignments and that they work at
Can somebody explain me this more accurately (SAT solution is very cursory)
Moreover I'd never encountered the phrase "Have v-ing" before, so it'd be great if someone can explain me that too.</p>
<p>C is a parallel structure, and i dont think we used to talk in the way E does.
I’d never encountered the phrase “Have v-ing” before. What’s the whole sentence?</p>
<p>It’s the whole sentence and there’s no misspellings. I hope someone can explain how could a phrase, which seems to be unknown, be a part of the correct answer despite an obvious parallel structure.</p>
<p>Do you think “have demanding” is not right?</p>
<p>It is correct. As the other user said, the sentence is a parallel structure. And “have” deals with “assignments” and has nothing to do with “demanding”. “demanding” is an adjective used to describe “assignments”.</p>
<p>You have assignments.</p>
<p>Now describe the “assignments”.</p>
<p>You have stupid assignments.
You have awesome assignments.
You have challenging assignments.
You have demanding assignments.</p>
<p>A and D are wrong because of the “is” (reasons is plural, should be “are”)</p>
<p>B is wrong because the latter part of the sentence is missing “that”</p>
<p>E is wrong for a similar reason, because it uses “in addition to” instead of “and that”</p>
<p>C is the best answer because of the parallel structure “reasons are that…and that…”</p>
<p>and yea, nothing wrong with “have demanding”</p>