Month: February 2022

After completing my sentence analysis, I noticed that I tend to use more compound sentences, throughout the two paragraphs that I chose from my essay, compared to simple sentences and complex sentences. I’m not surprised by my results as I am aware that I tend to be very wordy when it comes to my writing. I noticed that the couple of simple sentences that I used were to enhance my writing by making a statement or asking a question to grab the attention of my audience. I believe that in order to make my writing better, in this case, my comparative analysis essay, I should try to use more of the other sentence types. This might help my essay look and sound more even. I could possibly use more complex sentences when I analyze a quote. This will allow me to go more in-depth into what the quote is trying to show and how it connects to the overall message I intend to write about. In addition to that I realized that while I was writing my draft, I didn’t really focus on brainstorming all of my ideas and evidence onto a separate sheet of paper. Instead, I allowed my thoughts to keep running while I was working on my essay, which may have been the reason why certain sections sound repetitive or wordy. I noticed that I mainly struggle with that but for this essay, I can try to first process my ideas and then add them to my paper later on.

After choosing my two paragraphs and completing my sentence analysis, I noticed that I mostly used compound and simple sentences. However, these results did not seem to surprise me. Usually, I use simple sentences, so the reader doesn’t get confused reading my writings. While making this analysis, I also noticed that it sounded like I was writing using multiple tones. This deep analysis of my draft made me think about how I can introduce different sentence structures to improve the quality of my writing overall. I can use complex sentences to improve clarity in my writing.
Additionally, complex sentences can make my writing concise for the reader. I believe making my writing straightforward can allow me to add additional ideas. These new changes in my writing would also allow me to improve how I write overall in all my classes, making my sentences sound smooth and sophisticated. Adding more complex sentences in my writing would also build on whatever I had written in my draft and display my thoughts smoothly on the paper. Adding more complex sentences would also allow me to combine some of the simple sentences I used, drastically improving the flow in my writing and improving the clarity overall. These revisions can take me onto another level of improved writing that I can take advantage of in my other courses. I must also overlook how many times I repeated the same sentence structures since using too many simple sentences can make my writing sound weak, and using too many complex sentences can complicate my writing for the reader.

 

While reading my selected paragraphs and doing my sentence analysis, I noticed a mix of simple and complex sentences.  I like to use commas in my writing and since it is an analytical essay, explaining your thought process is necessary.  This wasn’t a big surprise to me because I tend to use a lot of simple sentences to explain the complex sentences further. In a way I think I don’t explain my quotes enough and that I need to do that more. What I understood by my sentence analysis is that I need to mix up my sentence structure more often. Also because it was a draft, I just wanted to get all of my ideas on paper and see where I can expand from there. Today’s class also helped because I realized I can also connect the timelines. It would help my essay flow smoothly and would be helpful input to my reader. I can also work on my grammar and the vocabulary I use to connect my sentences. That would turn simple sentences into compound complex sentences. I noticed 2-3 complex-compound sentences but I should use more to explain my thoughts. There was a lot to work with in both articles included in my essay. I felt like Dickson was very thorough in her essay and explained very well what she meant. It hard to rephrase those quotes because she did explain it perfectly and it flows very well with my essay also causing me to use a lot of simple sentences. 

The results were not too surprising to find out after identifying sentence types. I noticed that I mainly used compound or compound-complex sentences in my writing. It was interesting to analyze how I write while writing a paper, and I have determined that I write in three different ways. I either write as if I am speaking, write as if I am summarizing (not analyzing), or I write as if I am telling a story. You can tell through the different sentence structures or through the overall tone of the paragraph. I also noticed that I insert a lot of commas, whether I need them or not. This goes into play whenever I write as if I am speaking to an audience. I am planning on changing the way my tone is conveyed in my writing through the sentence structures and tone of the paper. This will be vital when I am comparing the artifacts I chose to Dickinson’s graffiti article because it will allow my writing to sound more analytical. I always had trouble with that in high school because I could not retain the information that the teacher was explaining. Sentence style definitely correlates to the future edits I will be making to my draft because it will help the paper sound more cohesive than it is now. Upon reading my piece, I noticed that it lacks flow since my ideas are all over the place. Sentence style can really help me to create sentences that fit into the analysis portion and sound like my thoughts are together.

After checking the first and second paragraphs of my draft, I found many sentences with commas, including one simple sentence, three complex sentences, and nine compound sentences. the structure of the sentences is very important and largely determines the reader’s experience. Using overly simple sentences may make the essay look poorly written, but using too many complex sentences can lead to confusion for the reader, so it is best to use both simple and complex sentences in your essay to make it neat and organized and easy to understand. I was a little surprised by the sentences I used, because I used a lot of complex sentences, even though it might make my essay complicated. I usually think of a general framework and start writing, because I don’t really like to delete everything and start over, which is very inefficient. Even though it’s just a draft, I still write it as if it were a formal article. When I go back and check it, if there are no huge mistakes, then I don’t have to spend a lot of time revising for that. Maybe I’ll choose to add some simple sentences so that my subsequent articles will allow the reader to better understand what I’m saying. I think revising sentence patterns is an exercise for my own writing, which can enhance my writing skills. But I will most likely keep my own style, which is something different for everyone. I also think I need to shorten some of these sentences to make them more impactful.

After doing the sentence analysis, I noticed that in my writing I use a lot of simple and compound sentences. I wasn’t as surprised because I tend to stick to using those structures more than  I do with complex and complex-compound. I also noticed that I tend to have a lot of choppy sentences within my writing. I’m not sure why that is. I usually cut my thoughts short to prevent run on sentences. I tend to use a lot of those as well. I feel like because this was a first draft, I was more concentrated on getting all my thoughts on paper. I wasn’t as focused on my sentence structures. I use first drafts as a way to get all my thoughts out, then the second draft is when I go through my sentences and start to notice the structures and organize them. In my final draft, I want to start using more complex, and complex-compound sentences. In my first draft, there’s a lot of compound and simple sentences. These changes can enhance my writing because with using more complex/complex-compound sentences I can go even more in depth with my words. Additionally, it can make my essay flow more smoothly. Instead of having all these short sentences, using the structures connect my sentences. Having just simple sentences in your essay makes it sound really choppy and it can disengage the reader. It could sound like a children’s storybook if you don’t include some other types of sentence structures.

When it comes to determining what writing style I have, examining what sentence types I use can be very helpful. After looking through the first two paragraphs of my draft, I found out I have a tendency towards compound and complex sentences. I identified 7 complex sentences and 4 compound sentences. It is possible there might be even more that I didn’t properly identify but the numbers do tell me this: I love complex sentences. On the other hand, I hardly used simple sentences at all. This fact surprised me because I was expecting simple sentences to appear just as often as compound sentences, but I guess when it comes to writing papers I try to avoid them. What definitely stands out the most is the sheer lack of any complex-compound sentences in my writing. There was not a single sentence in the paragraphs I looked at that could be identified as complex-compound. I can guess why I don’t use simple sentences often: I want my writing to appear more sophisticated. But why I don’t use complex-compound sentences at all is beyond me. Well, I guess there is nothing in the first two paragraphs of my paper that really necessitates such a sentence type. I suppose I should at least try to include on complex-compound sentence in the paragraphs where I have to compare the two objects. Knowing which sentence types I tend to use the most and which I don’t use at all will help me a long way in becoming a better writer.

                  No I was not surprised by the results. I was pretty confident my paper had very few simple sentences. After reviewing my essay I only had 3/18 sentences constructed as simple sentences, 8/18 compound sentences, 3/18 complex sentences and 4/18 complex compound sentences. I feel as if the reader will always be engaged because every sentence has a meaning. The simple sentences in my draft are used to introduce a topic or to explain my more advanced sentences. The compound sentences provided a lot of insight while the complex compound provided a lot of reasoning. Although I feel as if I did a great job on this piece I think I could use this sentence structure as a reference for my writing at all times. A structure of very few simple sentences and more compound, complex and compound complex is my type of format because I can keep the audience more engaged and my writing feels more reputable. I will be sure to keep an eye out on my sentence structure throughout the rest of my essay to be sure it is well published. Complex and Compound Complex sentences are great ways to enhance your writing because they usually involve a lot of transitional phrases and a lot of cause and effect scenarios. I am happy I got the opportunity to learn sentence structure and I will be sure to teach others about sentence structure when proof reading their work. Additionally, improving your sentence structure can help improve your dialect as that is something I would like to see improve.

As I am reading through my first draft to fill out my sentence revision form, I realize that I use a lot of commas in my writing and that I have a lot of long run-on sentences or choppy sentences because I use too many commas. This wasn’t really surprising to me because long run-on sentences have always been an issue for me. I think this happened because this was my very first draft so I was just trying to get down all my ideas onto the paper instead of being worried about if it makes sense and I also definitely did not read over it to make sure that it made sense. I was also a little surprised because I am never too confident in my writing so I was expecting a lot of wonky, weird, and hard-to-read sentences but to my surprise, I was faced with a lot fewer mistakes than I was expecting. This would help me make more changes in my draft by taking out unnecessary words, commas and cutting down some of my run-on sentences, and incorporating more simple style structured sentences into my writing as it would help me get the main idea of the paper to the reader in a clearer and easier way. These changes would help enhance my writing by making my point come across better on better and help me get straight to the point rather than a lengthy and wordy piece of paper.

As I completed my sentence analysis with my draft, I realized I use simple and compound sentences a lot. Those were my main two styles, and it didn’t really surprise me. Whenever I write, I tend to either get straight to the point, thus the simple sentences, or I explain my thoughts in depth — the compound sentences. These reveal to me that I’m always writing everything the same way. I don’t mix it up, which can make my work harder to read. Seeing how often I use these two types of sentences, I know I’m going to change it as I continue with my final draft. I want to mix styles more, and not just have my whole essay be in one tone. I think this would also make my ideas flow better because I won’t have to organize all of my thoughts a certain way. For example, if I use different sentence styles and add either more independent or dependent clauses, I can create more of a variation of my ideas. This will allow me to explore my own style of writing to see what works best for me, instead of just sticking with my old habits. I also plan on making my paragraphs longer by elaborating more on my ideas. Adding in complex-compound sentences, for example, will help me achieve my goal of expanding my thoughts. Similarly, I have some sentences that I need to shorten, but still make them impactful, so adding more complex sentences would help me with that.