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Writing Instruction in the Two-Year College, an Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) digest which "draws upon the thirteen published volumes of Inside English to offer a summary of practitioners' advice on techniques to improve two-year college students' writing skills," concludes that "isolated drills in usage, formal grammar, phonics, and spelling have little value . . . ," but "drills may be useful following diagnosis of weakness in a specific area. . . .". Furthermore, "sentence building is more productive than analysis or labelling." Chapter 2 illustrates why formal grammar instruction is ineffective. By contrast, the following exercises from Analytical Writing and Thinking show how an intuitive feeling for what constitutes a complete sentence is conveyed through the whole-language experience of letting students first correct comma splice errors (in which the comma divides the sentences) and then run-on errors, in which they must choose the division point. 3 Comma Splice Errors
On the highway a red light means stop. A blinking yellow light means slow down. In writing, a period means stop while a comma means slow down. People are accustomed to finding a period at the end of a sentence. ____________________ | 3 | Enside English is published by the English Council of the California Two-Year Colleges. |
When they come to a comma, they expect the next group of words to continue the same sentence rather than start a new sentence. If a comma is followed by a whole new sentence, readers become momentarily confused and have to stop, get reoriented, and then mentally start again.The example below is not a correct sentence. It is two sentences with only a comma between them.The luckiest couple was Adam and Eve, they had no in-laws.This is called a comma splice error because two sentences are spliced (joined) by a comma. Part 1 Correct with a Period and Capital Letter There are several ways to correct a comma splice. Often the easiest is just to separate the sentences by putting a period at the end of the first one and a capital letter at the beginning of the second. Here is the correction of the above comma splice: The luckiest couple was Adam and Eve. They had no in-laws.
Exercises Correct each comma splice by putting a period at the end of the first sentence and a capital letter at the beginning of the second. Write the two corrected sentences. | 1. | I always wear sunglasses when it rains, they protect my eyes from the umbrellas. | | 2. | Bigamy means having two wives, having more than two wives is pigamy. | | 3. | Drugs are not a gamble, in gambling you win sometimes. | | 4. | I stepped away from a laundry machine in Las Vegas for just three minutes, somebody won my wash. |
Part 2 Correct with a Semicolon If two sentences contain closely related ideas, you can separate them with a semicolon. Think of a semicolon as a weak period. It shows that two sentences are closely related. Here is how a comma splice is corrected with a semicolon.Wrong: Never buy anything with a handle, it means work. Right: Never buy anything with a handle; it means work.Notice that when you use a semicolon, you do not capitalize the first letter in the second sentence. Exercises For each exercise, write the two sentences separated by a semicolon. | 1. | He does not make a fool of himself all the time, he has to rest occasionally. | | 2. | My child has sensitive ears, he screams when I pull them. | | 3. | Thirty-five was a difficult age to pass, it took four years. |
Run-on Sentences When you speak to someone, you pause at the end of each sentence. The pause shows that you are ending one idea and starting another one. When you write, you usually put a period at the end of each sentence. Otherwise you may produce a run-on sentence such as this one:Misfortune is a point of view your headache feels good to an aspirin salesman.This run-on sentence is confusing because it presents two ideas that run together.Run-on sentences can be corrected in the same ways you corrected comma splices: by adding a period and a capital letter, or by adding a semicolon. Here is how the above run-on could be corrected.Misfortune is a point of view. Your headache feels good to an aspirin salesman. Part 1 Correct with a Period and Capital Letter The example above shows how to correct a run-on error by separating the sentences with a period and capital letter. Use this method for the following exercises. Exercises Rewrite each of the following run-on sentences correctly with a period and capital letter. | 1. | There is a new perfume that is guaranteed to drive businessmen crazy it smells like money. | | 2. | It is not easy to get a parking ticket in New York first you have to find a place to park. | | 3. | My parents did not want me they gave me a live teddy bear to play with in my crib. | | 4. | In a group of barbers, always pick the one with the worst haircut the cut each other's hair. |
The above lesson shows how usage problems can sometimes be corrected without the introduction of any grammatical terminology. In the next lesson, it is convenient to introduce the terms verb and tense. But students are not asked to label verbs in sentences. The grammar is learned informally and incidentally to mastering correctusage patterns.
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