Common Errors Essay

Common Errors Essay

            The papers this year are most definitely critiqued differently than previous years. The papers seem to be critiqued more on grammatical, sentence structure, and development issues. I have made many grammatical mistakes on all my papers, but one just stands out above all. That is comma splice.

            I am a repeat offender of the comma splice. A regular sentence must contain a main verb and a subject to be complete.  A comma splice is when you join two of those sentences together by a comma. The sentence may not have more than one main verb, and subject. So therefor, the comma splice was a killer for me! But, what I did do well is putting colons where semi-colons were supposed to go.

            Colons are used to introduce a list or quotation. Semi-colons are used to combine two sentences where the period has been left out. It is just to replace the period to give the sentence a more fluent flow. I would sometimes mix the two up, or I used the colon to combine two sentences if I forgot which one to put. I would always think of it like this. The colon has a comma on the bottom so it is like putting a comma in the place of a punctuation mark. And for the semi-colon I would think of it as a period since it has a double period in a sense. So I didn’t fully understand the rules to a semi-colon rule.

            Another issue of mine was hyphens. I knew that some numbers had hyphens in them, and some words. I never got when to use a hyphen other than that was how it was spelled, so I went along with it. A hyphen is used to combine a compound verb. So if the verb is not in the dictionary, you should highlight it. I followed that rule for a while until, I thought of some of the numbers in the alphabet are hyphenated. Then I thought that they are the more compound words like; twenty-two for instance.

            Other than errors, I have done some good things that goes along with grammatical errors. The indentions of the paragraphs are an everyday thing for me, but in the works cited section, indentions are hard to come by. They are very scarce in my papers. I did my works cited through a site called noodlebib, and it did not indent it so I just let it be.

            My common errors consisted of; comma splices, semi-colons, colons, indentions in the works cited, citing quotes correctly, sentence fragments, which to be perfectly honest I had no clue what it was before I had to do this essay, and hyphens. I have learned a lot from this essay and in general, about the grammatical errors that I make. I think that it will help me in the end to become a stronger writer, and also to become stronger in the grammatical section. Overall, from start to finish the only repeating issue was the comma splice. Also, looking at the papers from earlier in the year I think I have exceeded my expectations in improving from a grammatical standpoint.

4/20-100 minutes
4/22-66 minutes

Dark Turn of Mind

I decided to choose a song that Dr. D had suggessted because the song I was going to do was inapropriate. Although the song is short, it contains a lot of techniques. There are 5 stanzas. In the first stanza, the singer makes lines 2 and 4 rhyme. The singer also states that you shouldn't treat her unkind, because shes already been givin the dark turn of mind. So it is irony because it seems like a bad thing to have a dark turn of mind, but then she is ready to give it to someone else. Then in the 2nd stanza, its all about the senses. "Now I SEE the bones in the river and I FEEL the wind through the pine and I HEAR the shadows a-calling." I think that she used this technique to get the reader to really embrace the song, and make it enter into the body through the ears, eyes, and skin.

In the 3rd stanza the singer uses a technique called imagery. In the first 2 lines of the stanza there are 2 words that start with night and then the last line in the stanza states,"When the sun goes down." There is a dark image that is brought up. In the 4th stanza "And leave me if I'm feeling too lonely
Full as the fruit on the vine
You know some girls are bright as the morning
And some have a dark turn of mind
This to me translates into, Make your spirit leave my body, as I am full on your blood. Some girls like the daylight then some girls flock to the night. The 5th stanza is nothing shy of creepy also. "And some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind." The transition between the 2nd and 3rd stanzas are significant.

Outside reading

This week for outside reading I spent a good hour on reading 4 poems and listing techniques, and then having to explain why the author uses that technique to make a conclusion. It is very hard work. The first poem I read and annotated was the most difficult. I felt like I couldn't do it. It was long, and complicated, and in my opionon hard to annotate. But, once I did it, I felt like I accomplished something, and from then on the poems got easier to annotate.

For my outside reading book, I am still reading My Brother's Keeper. I read for 46 minutes which completes the requirement. I left off at the part where he found out the his brother didn't care for anything anymore. I felt bad and sorry for him. He is missing out on life. Meanwhile, Toby is trying to cover up his brother's use so that he spares his mom some trouble. Personally, I felt like that was the wrong thing to do because Jake's drug use might get worse and worse.

Outside Reading

The analyzing poem was easy but hard at the same time. I was surprised by the fact that the teacher made us analyze the poem over a blog, so it was hard to convey what you said so you had to use distinct words to get your point across. I think I did a good job though and I can also tell that I am getting better at analyzing stories and poems. So thats a plus.

I'm still reading "My Brother's Keeper", and I left off at the point where he found out that his brother did drugs. Although my brother doesn't do drugs, it is very easy to relate to the book. The main character collects baseball cards, and I was like finally a book I can relate to.

Analyzing a Childrens poem

"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

I read all the poems, and this was my favorite. The poem has 4 stanzas, and the 1st and 3rd lines rhyme and the 2nd and 4th line rhyme. Their is also a stop at the end of line 2 and 4. In the 1st stanza their is a sense of smell. When it says "But it hung on like death", it gives you the horrible smell of alcohol breath. The second stanza gives sound. "Slid from the kitchen shelf", makes you imagine the sound of pans hitting the ground. In the 4th stanza, you get the feeling of a clock in your head ticking and "At every step you missed..My right ear scraped a buckle." I think this is a good story to analyze because it has a lot of fluency, rhyming, patterns, sound, smell, and feeling. But, I think the author says in the 4th stanza that implies that more is hurting from his dad's alcoholism.