Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools / Front Page
Improving Your Writing Style By Varying Your SyntaxAP Language – Mr. McIlwain – 5/15Assignment: Revise (or rewrite) ICE#15 with an eye toward improving its syntactic aspects. Incorporate two examples of each sentence type (i.e. simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) and at least eight of the varied beginnings types.Prompt: Author and lecturer Alfie Kohn contends that “competition by its very nature is always unhealthy.” Read the following excerpt from Kohn’s essay “Why Competition?” The cost of any kind of competition in human terms is incalculable. When my success depends on other people’s failure, the prospects for a real human community are considerably diminished. . . . Moreover, when my success depends on my being better than, I am caught on a treadmill, destined never to enjoy real satisfaction. Someone is always one step higher, and even the summit is a precarious position in light of the hordes waiting to occupy it in my stead. I am thus perpetually insecure and, as psychologist Rollo May points out, perpetually anxious. Then, in a well-written essay, develop a position on Kohn’s claim about the nature of competition. Use appropriate evidence from your reading, experience, or observations to support your argument.I. Sentence types: Sentences are often classified according to the kind and number of clauses they contain. A clause is a group of words with its own subject and verb. An independent clause expresses a complete thought and can stand by itself as a complete sentence. A subordinate clause, although it has a subject and verb, cannot stand by itself as a complete sentence; it can only be part of a sentence.A simple sentence consists of a single independent clause.A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction or by a semicolon.A complex sentence consists of one independent—or main—clause and one or more subordinate clauses.A compound-complex sentence consists of two or more independent clauses and one or more subordinate clauses.II. Varied Beginnings: Various ways to begin sentences (to add variety to your style)1. BEGIN WITH A PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE:“In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew.” H. Melville, Moby Dick2. BEGIN WITH MORE THAN ONE PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE:“On this public holiday, as on all other occasions, for seven years past, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth.” N. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter3. BEGIN WITH A SIMILE:“Like a razor also, it seems massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure.” E.A. Poe "The Pit and the Pendulum"4. BEGIN WITH AN ADJECTIVE OR SEVERAL ADJECTIVES:“Silent, grim, colossal -- the big city has ever stood against its revilers.” O. Henry, "Between Rounds"5. BEGIN WITH AN APPOSITIVE: “The elephant, the slowest breeder of all known animals, would in a few thousand years stock the whole world.” C. Darwin, The Descent of Man6. BEGIN WITH AN INFINITIVE“To see her, and to be himself unseen and unknown, was enough for him at present.” T. Hardy, Jude the Obscure7. BEGIN WITH AN ADVERB OR ADVERBIAL CLAUSE - An adverbial clause (or an adverb clause) is a group of words which plays the role of an?adverb. (Like all clauses, an adverbial clause will contain a?subject?and a?verb.) Adverbial clauses are introduced by a subordinating conjunction, in this case one of time: “After the game has finished, the king and pawn go into the same box.” (Italian Proverb)8. BEGIN WITH A NOUN CLAUSE: A noun clause is a dependent clause serving as the subject or object of a sentence. It begins with if, that, why, what, or when.“That he believes his own story?is remarkable.” (subject)“What the witness said may not be true.” (subject)9. BEGIN WITH A PARTICIPLE:“Crawling on all fours, I made steadily but slowly toward them; till at last, raising my head to an aperture among the leaves I could see clear down into a dell beside the marsh, and closely set about with trees, where Long John Silver and another of the crowd stood face to face in conversation.” R.L. Stevenson, Treasure Island10. BEGIN WITH A “SUSPENDED” TRANSITIONSuspended syntax delays (i.e. suspends) the meaning of the sentence until later in the sentence, often the very end, as in the case of a periodic sentence. A?periodic sentence?has the main clause or predicate at the end. ................
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