Week 3 blog

My life has been shaped by several events which have occurred through the years. I have been effected by these occurrences in different ways, and they have made me what I am today. One snap shot that I can remember vividly is when my mom became ill with a rare blood disease known as Aplastic Anemia. I was given this tragic news when i came home from summer camp. My dad told me that mom was in the hospital and very sick. I became very upset and overwhelmed with many emotions. This changed my life drastically, and made me more independent and a stronger person. I had to take care for my self and also help my mom during this awful time period in our lives. This event had a major impact on my life, and how a view each day. Another “snap shot” which has made me into the person i am today, is when i played in the championship basketball game in 4th grade, in a recreational league. I played my heart out, and played a great game. I hit a three point shot which tied the game up in the last seconds. We ended up losing the game, and i was extremely upset. Losing this game made me realize there is more to life than sports, and if you try your hardest you should feel accomplished regardless the outcome. I also realized that success is not easy, and must be worked for. These two memories were very upsetting times in my life, but have made me stronger, more determined, and a better person today.

Week 2 (Beyond Words)

In previous English classes, which I have taken, we learned to pick apart our writings and to improve them more in the grammatical sense.  The main thing I took out of my class from last semester is that not every draft has to be perfect.  The first draft may be poor, but improvement will come in time when you look over your paper.  One of my main papers was when we had to look at music video, and analyze the deeper meaning of the lyrics and the scenes in the video.  This may connect to this English class, because I am aware that we are looking at the media aspect of writing.

By reading the introduction and the first chapter in beyond words, I realized that we are going learn various forms of texts.  I found out in the introduction that we are not just going to be learning about our typical writing, and this class is going to be more about the media aspect of writing.  Another aspect of the text I enjoyed was the section where it told you to “think beyond your first impressions”.  I really like this idea and think it will be interesting to analyze our writings and readings in more depth.  Also, the book discusses about audiences and how a text can be for a specific group of people.  I can relate to this idea, because in my previous English class, we had to find an ad and talk about how it is promoted to a specific group, and how it gets the message across to them.

Chapter 46

After reading chapter 46 I felt more informed about passive voice and using active verbs better. Before reading I had the misconception that writing in the passive voice is rarely a good option for any kind of writing but I now realize how impact-full using the passive voice can be. The example, “The bill was finally passed by the senate” shows us how passive voice can downplay the subject of the sentence and sometimes can leave the actors completely out like the example, “the bill was finally passed”. As you continue in the chapter the book explains why sometimes “when the recipient of the action is more important than the doer of the action, however, the passive voice is the more appropriate choice”.   Overall I felt this brief chapter was short and sweet that contained a lot of purpose.  Using active verbs correctly is an extremely important part of editing for clarity.

McGraw-Hill Handbook

Chapter 46 on active verbs was rather short but had quite a bit of good information in it. Whenever I write I never pay attention to whether I use the passive or active voice. When I read chapters such as this that put a lot of focus on verbs and the different types I realize how little I actually know about correct grammar. Before reading this I could not have told you the difference between passive or active voice. I simply just write what sounds the best to me. I don’t think about what type of voice it is or what type of verb I’m using. In this chapter they talk about not overusing certain forms of verbs and voices and I find it somewhat amusing that even though I know very little about the correct form, normally what sounds the most fluid is what is grammatically correct. This is not true in all cases but it does work, or it seems to at least. This section also talked about using verbs that can make your writing both clearer and stronger. Even though be verbs have a lot of great uses in writing, active verbs are much more direct. They get to the point quicker and are more effective.

Chapter 46

Chapter 46 on Active verbs provides a great deal of useful information that comes in handy to those editing their work. Within this chapter, the text discusses multiple subjects that are key elements when one is editing their work and wants to have the most coherent essay possible. For example, the section on when to consider using an alternative to a “be” verb is most helpful when going about editing to have the most effective word choice. As defined in the text “be” verbs are variations in tense of the word be such as am, are, is, was, were, been, being; and when it is necessary one can replace the “be” verb with the present tense of the actual verb. Another useful section is 46b. 46b discusses the active and passive forms of a sentence. As stated in the text, when writing one should use the active voice unless using the passive voice would be more effective. In most cases the active voice is the most effective because unlike the passive voice, the active voice states the subject first and sounds more convincing. In written assignments that require the writer to take a position, such as argumentative essays, one should always use the active voice over the passive voice.

McGraw-Hill Handbook

One of the things that annoys me to no end is when people use passive voice in writing. I try not to since it bothers me. Sometimes, though, it is necessary. The example that the book used was an important example. “After her heart attack, my mother was taken to the hospital.” That kind of passive voice, as the book says, is ok to use. I agree.
This chapter in the McGraw-Hill handbook gave a lot of useful information on verb choice. I really like how active voice is short and to the point. Action verbs make the thought seem more powerful.
I found it interesting that passive voice is used quite a bit in scientific and business papers. I had never thought of it before. It makes sense as to why it would be used in scientific writing. Not many scientists are focused on who is performing the experiment but what it is about.

chapter 46 mcgraw-hill handbook

This chapters is all about the difference between active and passive voice while writing a paper. I had no idea what these were so i learned a lot from this section. It discusses the pros and cons of using each voice and in which situations they are beneficial. For example, if telling a story it is better to use active verbs. Using active verbs makes the story more interesting because you are telling it in the present as opposed to the past. The verbs are more intense and engaging. I have never realized this but now that they mention it i completely agree. I have read papers that tell the whole story in the past and I find myself being lulled to sleep. A time that it is good to use passive voice if you are writing somethings as structured as a lab report or something scientific. Although it may not be as engaging, it is more detailed and lengthy. Plus scientific readings are not supposed to be exciting they are supposed to be boring. They must uphold that reputation by using passive voice I guess.

Chapter 46 McGraw-Hill

Chapter 46 of the McGraw-Hill Handbook gave a really great lesson on active verbs because of all the great tips and examples it provided. It really made me think about my papers and how I could improve some of my word choice. I found this very helpful because sometimes find myself using the passive voice a lot. I liked how the chapter gave me ways to edit those phrases to change to the active voice. I didn’t learn anything new from this reading but it defiantly was a good reminded because sometimes we can forget simple writing tools. I found the part where it says not to use run on sentences very helpful.

I find myself becoming repetitive in some of my papers to meet the page requirement. This chapter helped me with ideas to break away from a boring pattern by giving examples. The examples in the chapter are very useful because they show me how easy it is to change around the words to make it flow better. Exercise 46.2 gave good practice because it gave us a chance to edit the sentences. Before reading this I never realized how much better a sentence sounds when using active verbs rather than passive.

 

McGraw Hill Handbook- Active verbs and such

In this chapter of The McGraw Hill Handbook, the author really puts a lot of information out there that we typically just skim over and never even think about in our writing. He says that the ‘to be’ verbs can be replaced and make a writing much better. I always forget about this part of writing. If I simply put in a more strong, active verb, it really would be more appealing for my paper. Thinking about it, would you rather read repetitive be’s and to be’s in someone’s paper, or different, strong, attention grabbing verbs? This would really pull an audience into your paper much more.

They also talked about passive and active voices when writing. It is obvious that an active voice is favored much more by writers and readers.  Sometimes passive voices can drag a sentence on and on with much unnecessary information. It is ok however to write in both voices tho, of course not typically in the same paper. But, many people’s ideas do differ about the choice of voice they wish to use when writing their paper. I typically enjoy using active because it answer’s a question short, concise, and to the point. Why would we drag something on that could be answered in much fewer words ?

McGraw-Hill Handbook Chapter 46

Although I probably should, when writing I don’t usually think about what voice I should use to write; in regards to passive or active. After seeing the first example between active and passive voice, it was clear the active was the better choice going to back to the wordiness in Chapter 38. The active voice was very concise, while the passive voice was somewhat drawn out. Also, with passive voice, it doesn’t always answer all the questions. For example, “The milk was spilled.” It does not say who spilled it or on what. Although, most of the chapter argues that it is best to use the active voice it is made clear that the passive voice is often times beneficial for scientific reports. Which makes sense because with scientific reports you want to be more detailed and “wordy” rather than to the point. They must include every step, material, etc in their reports so that when someone is reading over it they know the process that took place for the scientist to reach that conclusion. This chapter was informative for the most part, but not as much as the others had been just due to the fact that the whole chapter seemed somewhat repetitive and was very short at that.