In our English enrichment classes, A Grade Ahead teaches intensive grammar and style lessons to help students develop their writing skills. I’ve compiled a short list of lessons that students often forget to apply.
As a university student studying English, I’m always relearning these lessons. They tend to disappear from students’ minds because they’re underutilized. Consistently put these lessons into practice, and you will set yourself apart from the majority of writers.
Cohesion
Transitions And Subordinates
Cohesive writing connects together all ideas in a paragraph or larger work. Most people struggle with writing transition words, phrases, and sentences, but transitions really make or break a composition. Consider subordinating one clause to another. “Before,” “if,” and “despite” are just a few examples of subordinating conjunctions you can use to make sure the ideas of a paragraph unfold in a clear, logical order.
Did you know that A Grade Ahead teaches transitions and clauses in our classes, such as our 6th grade English program? Take a free assessment to get started today!
Reuse Key Words
Let’s say you’re writing an essay. If you refer to “Character A” as “Character B’s” playmate, then stick with the word “playmate.” Don’t flip-flop between “playmate,” “friend,” and “classmate” when you refer to Character A — even if all of those descriptors are true. Writing advice (correctly) drills into us that we ought to vary our language. However, we can only effectively do so if we build a foundation with key words that will keep our readers on track.
A Grade Ahead begins to focus on comprehension elements, such as key words and details, with simple stories beginning as early as kindergarten!
Action
Limit Weak Verbs
- So-so: There are thousands of workers protesting the wage cut.
- Better: Thousands of workers protest the wage cut.
Look at how punchy I made the second version. “There are” takes the sentence and the reader nowhere. Don’t stress about eliminating “being” verbs altogether, but try to limit them, especially during revision.
Circumvent Nominalizations
When you convert a verb or adjective to a noun, you form a nominalization. For example, “suggestion” is a nominalization of the verb “suggest.” Nominalizations make words bigger, so they seem impressive. But really, they breed passive sentences and ideas. Like weak verbs, nominalizations are difficult to avoid. Try to recycle them back into verbs or adjectives.
- So-so: He made a suggestion that they write about the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies.
- Better: He suggested they write about how caterpillars transform into butterflies.
Look how direct this is!
A Grade Ahead understands the importance that parts-of-speech knowledge has in making better style and word choices. That’s why we begin focusing on parts of speech in our 1st grade English program.
Punctuation
Play with punctuation! Most recognize semicolons (;), em-dashes (—), and parentheses but don’t feel comfortable actually incorporating these punctuation marks into their writing. Study how to use them to make yourself more comfortable. Varying punctuation makes your writing more dynamic and can help you build your personal style as a writer.
Punctuation is important! Start your 3rd Grader on the right track with A Grade Ahead.
Bonus
Watch Out For Misplaced And Dangling Modifiers!
I catch this mistake pretty often when I’m editing someone’s writing. Even though I know better, I notice them in my own drafts too. Modifiers are tricky! I wrote a few examples to help you understand the difference.
- Misplaced Modifier: I rode the train with my mom that goes into the city.
- Correction: My mom and I rode the train that goes into the city.
In this sentence, “that goes into the city” is misplaced because it is modifying “mom” when it should be modifying “train.”
- Dangling Modifier: He jumped into the water, landing on a floatie.
- Correction: He jumped into the water and landed on a floatie.
In this sentence, “landing on a floatie” is dangling because it modifies “water,” so the water is landing on a floatie. This doesn’t make sense. You can restructure the sentence in numerous ways, but understand that “landing” must modify “he” because “he” is completing the action.
A Grade Ahead does not forget about our older, more advanced students. These sorts of corrections and more are covered in our classes for older students, such as our high school English program.
Take this advice into account next time you write an essay, a homework assignment, or even an email. Write (or at least edit) conscientiously!
Did any of these tips surprise you? Would you like to add any advice someone’s shared with you on this topic? Let us know in the comments!
Looking for even more? See if an A Grade Ahead Academy near you is offering Time Traveler Tales, or one of our other fun enrichment camps, in your area!
Author: Grace Heberling, Teacher at A Grade Ahead
