I liked the two lessons that we had to watch on the Style Academy. I have learned about both sentence imitation and sentence combining in high school, so these lessons were a review, but I enjoyed them because they were fun and interesting, and the guy doing the videos was a real human. I'm glad I didn't have to listen to a robot.
Sentence combining is a really useful skill to have because the syntax of a paper or argument is CRUCIAL. You can have the best ideas in the world but if you only use simple sentences, few people will be very interested.
When I was a sophomore in high school, our teacher would have us do warm ups before English class started. I wondered why It was relevant, but I now realize that the practice helps us as writers to add to our "bag of tricks." The more we read and attempt to imitate, the more our own style will develop. We discover what we like in others' writing, and then we imitate it and cast aside what we don't like, and it makes us stronger writers.
Both these writing techniques are going to help all of us write stronger opinion editorials.
If you read this far, you're a saint. Thank you.
Thank you for calling me a saint, haha. I like that the syntax is so crucial, because that's something that many introductory writers forget to do.
ReplyDeleteGreat insight! It's wonderful to see the connections you've made between what you've learned in high school to what you are learning about now and how you can combine those together into a large 'bag of tricks' as you put it. That's a great way to think about cultivating your skill as a writer!
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