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"Swimming or Floating" - need help to locate my comma splices and fused sentences. [2]
Greetings!
You have written an interesting and engaging essay! You're right that your sentences could use a bit of tightening up, so here goes:
First off, any time you have quotation marks, be sure your comma or period goes inside the mark: "I Just Wanna Be Average." "clean your room," (This is the American rule. The only exception is with single letters, like "A".)
There are many people in this world[omit comma]that will do what you ask of them, and that is it. Nothing more and nothing
less. It is like when I tell my kids
This same effortless situation occurs between students and
teachers. For instance, the instructor gives the student an assignment to read a chapter in the textbook and take the quiz at the end of the chapter
;[semicolon or period here] the student follows the instructions from the teacher and does not go beyond that point.
When we begin school our education experience is, go to school, and do what the teachers tell us. - Misplaced commas aside, this sentence is a little awkward. How about "From our first day of school, we are told, "do what the teacher says."
The "letters" are based on the work and behavior that is carried out while we are still
children. These letter grades are intended to determine how well we will do in
the future."If you want to become a successful person you must have good grades", this is something along the lines of what we are told while in school. - This is a little weak; consider "If you want to become a successful person you must have good grades" is the mantra we hear while in school.
Motivation could just be a few words such as "good job" or "
nice try." This can help direct you and get you to do a little more than you would normally.
can sometimes help [no comma] certain people work better
I do not agree
; [or period] in my own educational experience, I do better when my work is acknowledged, whether it's to let me know that I need to do better or that I did a great
job. This can make me more sure of myself.
In a previous semester [better would be "One semester ..."], on the first day of class I had an Instructor[didn't you have the instructor on the subsequent days of class as well? Say, "I had an instructor who told us on the first day of class to ..."] "write the **** down, look the ****
up." This instructor was very blunt to say the least. - There are a number of words I can think of to go where the **** are. You might consider putting the first letter of the word -- just a thought! :-)
In this paragraph, almost everywhere you have a comma, it should be a period (or, as an option, a semicolon. I have used both. I also added a couple of commas.):
He kept me frazzled and somewhat confused the entire
semester. The teaching method used was very different
from any other I had ever experienced. The course was similar to a Hybrid
class. All of the assignments that we were to complete for the entire semester were listed on a discussion board. I liked
that; I knew what I had to do upfront, no surprises. There was rarely ever a due date
given; he would mention an assignment once maybe twice then, on any given day
afterwards, request that we email it to him the next day. In the beginning this was very puzzling to the
class; eventually we all sort of got used to it. Either you had the work done or you missed out on that grade. Some days we were in the computer lab, other days in a lecture type
classroom. We never knew what day we would be where.
This instructor asked tons of
questions. Most were so obvious that it made me less than confident in the answers that I wanted to respond
with; it made me hesitate or not answer at all. I couldn't wait until this class
was over. Most of the class felt the same way.
The major portion of our grades would come from an e-portfolio [no comma] that would explain our learning experience from beginning to end in his
class. The class knew about this from the start of class but we didn't start working on the e-portfolios until the last few weeks of the
semester. I worked on it day and night hours at a time. Two weeks before class was over he gave an extra credit assignment to do. He would not divulge ...
Here's something that will help you understand where you need a comma and where a period. Read your paper out loud, preferably to a friend. Everywhere you have a comma, pause only very briefly; do not take a breath. Everywhere you have a period, stop and take a breath. If you find yourself running out of air before the end of the sentence, you probably have a run-on sentence! Semicolons are a little trickier. They divide two phrases that can stand alone on their own, but have related ideas that tie in to each other. They are generally optional; when in doubt, just use a period. There are lots of good sources online that explain the use of punctuation. Just use "punctuation" or " when use comma period" or "how to use semicolon" or search terms such as those and you'll get a plethora of sources.
I have tried to put all my corrections in bold, but read carefully in case I missed one. Best of luck in your studies!
Thanks,
Sarah, EssayForum.com