Today's session was tailor-made for me. I used to think I wrote very clearly. That is, until I got so much red pen on my page I thought Steve had a serious accident reading my stories.
My biggest issue has always been active vs. passive voice, and if you look not so hard I'm sure you'll find it in this post as well. I have never been good at active voice. Passive voice just comes out. It aggravates me since I always try to instill in my students that they want to write the most simple way they can in order to make their point; it would be nice if I practice what I preach! ACT has lots of questions where they want students to know how to pick the best sentence structure, and the best answer is ALWAYS the sentence with the most simple structure and no passive voice. If I have a list of options I could pick the best one, but it gets hard when I'm the one writing the sentence out of my own head.
The best illustration came from Candace and Travis, who read from a "journalese" version of a conversation about vacations. I have posted the video below if you missed it. We do have a tendency to not write like we speak, and that is a point I not only need to teach, but also follow.
Sharon Northington
McCracken County High School
Paducah, Kentucky
Sharon, I am so glad you got video of this! I too struggle with active and passive voice and it gets me into trouble with my students who look for mistakes like that in writing. I think the best way to correct this is to read your writing aloud.
ReplyDeleteKathryn Wilkins
Kearns High School
Kearns, Utah