#amwriting #Grammar 4. Glimpses into Clauses, Conjunctions, with Closing Comments on Commas

This is the fourth of four posts on common grammar errors, omissions, and misunderstandings. 

Here's the link to a "bonus" grammar glimpse: 

How Good Grammar Saves Lives and Other Reasons It’s Still Important

It's packed with examples and explanations. 

Thanks to Dave Adams <dave@safenetexperts.com> 

Most writers have grammar issues. The issues chosen for this blog series are some that I experience in my writing.  The issue with each issue in the series ranges from significant to bothersome in my writing.

I teach a technical writing class to nurses in the BS-Nursing program at Point Loma Nazarene University. Early versions of the course focused on rules of English grammar. I've shifted the focus to the importance of editing. If you search my past blogs, you'll find LOTS of instruction, information, and insistence on the importance of editing.

The above paragraph does not mean good grammar is not important in your writing. The four blogs in this series present information that I’ve gleaned, remembered or learned about grammar while in the role of a writing teacher. I know that teaching this class helped my writing. I’m running this series--and following it was a series on adverb use/abuse--with high hopes that both series will help your writing, too.

If you don’t experience any of these issues in your writing, I hope you realize how fortunate you are!

This glimpse begins with

Clauses

Independent Clauses (IC)

• An independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and verb and expresses a complete thought.
• They can live on their own. 
• An independent clause is a sentence.

Jim studied in the Sweet Shop for his chemistry quiz.

 

Dependent Clauses (DC)

• A dependent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and verb but does not express a complete thought.
• They rely on the rest of the sentence for meaning.
• A dependent clause cannot be a sentence.
• They often depend on a dependent marker word for connection to the IC.
• Another clue you have a DC is the presence of a subordinating conjunction (because, since) or a relative pronoun (who, when)—see below,

When Jim studied in the Sweet Shop for his chemistry quiz . . . (What happened when he studied? The thought is incomplete.)

BONUS TIP!!

Dependent Marker Word

A dependent marker word is a word added to the beginning of an independent clause that makes it into a dependent clause.

When Jim studied in the Sweet Shop for his chemistry quiz, it was very noisy.

Some common dependent markers are: after, although, as, as if, because, before, even if, even though, if, in order to, since, though, unless, until, whatever, when, whenever, whether, and while. Some common dependent markers are: after, although, as, as if, because, before, even if, even though, if, in order to, since, though, unless, until, whatever, when, whenever, whether, and while.

Connecting dependent and independent clauses is commonly done with . . .

Conjunctions

Goggle defines conjunction as, “a word used to connect clauses or sentences or to coordinate words in the same clause (e.g., and, but, if)”

Coordinating

·      These join equivalent structures, including any part of speech, phrases, and clauses.

·      
     FANBOYS! is an acronym to help remember the most common conjunctions. Jot down your thoughts on what conjunction is represented by each letter in the acronym. The solution is at the end of this section.

Correlative

These also join equivalent structures, and they come in pairs: both… and, not only… but also

Subordinating

·      These introduce adverb clauses (dependent clauses) and signal the relationship between the adverb clause and (usually) an independent clause.

·      They include since, because, once, and although.

Subordinating conjunctions begin dependent clauses. Dependent clauses can tell us whether we need a comma.

     ·      Does it come before the independent clause in the sentence? If yes, you need a comma! (e.g. “Because Jess likes cats, we stopped to pet the kitten.”)

     ·      Does it come after the independent clause instead? If yes, you DON’T need a comma. (e.g. “We stopped to pet the kitten because Jess likes cats.”)

When one of these subordinating conjunctions is used right before an independent clause, it makes the clause DEPENDENT instead.

A dependent clause cannot stand alone as its own sentence; it must be used with an independent clause.

     ·      If the DEPENDENT comes first, separate it from the independent with a comma.

     ·      If the INDEPENDENT clause comes first, no comma is needed before the dependent.

Think of the dependent clause as a child stepping into the street.

 ·      If the child (the dependent) is in the street first, you’d ask, “Where is that kid’s parent?” It would give you pause. So give it a comma.

 ·      If the parent steps out first and leads the child along, it doesn’t give you pause at all. You leave out the comma.

BONUS! Conjunctive adverbs

·      These connect independent clauses and frequently act as transitions. Think of them as coordinating conjunctions with superpowers.

·      They include words like however, similarly, therefore, and finally.

My advice with conjunctive adverbs is to rewrite your sentence or paragraph and eliminate the need for these terms as often as you can.

Acronym Answer:

FANBOYS!

For, and, nor, but, or, yet, so

Closing Comments on Commas

You need a comma in all the following situations. Thanks to OWL from Perdue University for some of this information. Here’s a link for a more detailed look at comma abuse.

IC, IC (remember the conjunction)

DC, IC (ONLY if the DC comes first)

After an Introductory Phrase: In the beginning, God created . . .

Between items in a Series of items: …lions, tigers, and bears…

Some examples need more than the above shorthand to clear up.

Coordinate adjectives: Can alternate positions without changing the meaning of the sentence. He was a difficult, stubborn child. http://www.chompchomp.com/handouts/commatip06.pdf

Non-restrictive clause:  A non-restrictive clause is a clause which is not needed to identify the word it modifies, i.e., it is just additional information. As a non-restrictive clause is not essential to the meaning of a sentence, it is offset with commas. For example, Peter Jones, who plays goalkeeper for our village football team, has worked at his father's greengrocers for twenty years. (http://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/non-restrictive_clauses.htm)

Appositive phrase: A noun or noun phrase that renames another noun right beside it. The appositive can be a short or long combination of words. The insect, a cockroach, is crawling across the kitchen table. It renames insect. http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/appositive.htm

Parenthetical phrase: Can use parentheses, commas, dashes or brackets to include nonessential information. "The three boys, Bob, James, and Joey, went out to get some ice cream.  https://www.reference.com/education/example-parenthetical-phrase-c1c24aadb333348f

Participial phrase: Always function as adjectives, adding a description to the sentence. The horse trotting up to the fence hopes that you have an apple or carrot. Trotting up to the fence modifies the noun horse. http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/participlephrase.htm

Contrasting element: Sometimes you will want to emphasize two strongly contrasting ideas or points by inserting a comma between them: We should remember the lessons we've learned, not regret the time we spent on a pirate ship learning them. http://www.crosswaterfarm.com/commas/ce.html

Transitional phrase: These are very important. Important enough for a graphic.

 http://www.smart-words.org/linking-words/transition-words.png

Ultimately, use commas for

**CLARITY** (…within reason)

A good motto for commas is:

When in doubt, leave it out.

Next: ADverbs Often SUBTRACT from Your Writing

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My website is: www.crdowning.com

E-mail: crd.author@gmail.com

#Teaching Tip #7. In-class grading techniques and more

This is the seventh of a series of 10 posts.

All 10 posts ran on consecutive weeks. 

As of Labor Day, 2018, all ten of these #Teaching Tip posts are searchable on my blog.

If you're not a teacher and you're reading this,
let a teacher know they are available.

I've been in enough in-service/professional-development sessions to guarantee that the information in this series is better than most of the information you’ll get while sitting through all your teacher workshops this coming school year.

You might be asking yourself,

What gives this guy the nerve to offer ideas about teaching AND commentary on professional development to anyone?

That's a legitimate question.

I invite you to follow this link and check my credentials.

https://www.crdowning.com/engage-in-thinking

If there is part of the topic of grading that is more despised than “Group Project Grades” it has to be “Group Assessment (Tests/Quizzes) Grades.”

I hope you’ve read the previous blog post about my Group Grade policy and procedure. If not, it might be a good idea to do that before continuing with this post.

http://crdowning-author.blogspot.com/2017/06/almanac-for-teachers-grading-over-years_26.html

Ultimately each student should receive a grade that accurately reflects her/his level of understanding at that point in time.

That’s fairly easy to do on an individually completed in-class assignment. Assuming you were monitoring the session.

It’s harder to do on homework—who (student/parent/buddy) did what?

It’s harder still on tests.

It can be hardest for a semester grade. That doesn’t have to be the case. I’ll discuss semester grades in the last post in this series.

Today we’re looking at Group Testing.

Before that, a “bird walk” into testing in general . . .

One of my pet peeves was hearing a teacher say as they were leaving school in the afternoon, “I’ve got to get home and write the test for tomorrow.”

If you—TEACHER—don’t know what you’re going to hold students accountable for before you begin planning a unit—or EARLY in that planning process—how can you expect the students to know what they are supposed to learn/retain/understand during the unit?

Okay. That bird has flown the coop.

I used group assessment at various times, most commonly for quizzes.

Whether the questions were handed out on paper, projected on a screen, or given orally, on a group quiz the rules were as follows.

1. You may not communicate orally during this quiz.
2. You can write on scratch paper, which I will collect with your answer sheet.
3. If you talk once, you get a warning and a mark on your answer sheet.
4. Subsequent talking infractions result in additional marks on your answer sheet. Each additional mark is a __ percent deduction from your final score.
5. Each group member must physically write about the same number of answers on your answer sheet as every other group member. This was modified in classes with special needs students, but it was rare that each group member wasn’t able to write at least one answer.

Although the written communication often included significant amounts of pencil pounding at a specific answer on the scratch paper, it’s amazing how quietly kids can argue. 

It wasn’t uncommon for a silent group quiz to use a whiteboard as an answer sheet. That made grading quick and finished by the end of the quiz time.

The most evolved group test I gave was on "evolutionary theory and process." I gave this test to 1) AP Biology Students at Monte Vista High School; 2) General Education Biology at Point Loma Nazarene University; and 3) biology students of all levels at Great Oak High School.

What follows are scans of the directions and the test itself.

The formula for calculating a student's grade is not easy to read. Here it is in "older eye" size.

Your Question Score +

Your Question Score +

The Group Question Score +

The Average of All Individual Questions =

Your score on this exam

A conservative estimate on the number of groups that have taken this exam in this format is 150. Not once did every person in a group receive the same numeric grade.

I had some PLNU students come to me and ask if they had to be in a group. My answer:

"If you choose to take the test by yourself, you are still responsible for turning in answers for the same number of questions as each group—that means you have to answer five individual questions and the group question in the same time period that the groups answer six questions. However, each group member answers only one alone."

By the next class meeting, all PLNU students were ready to be in a group.

I only had to give the above answer once in high school. It was an AP Bio student. She also chose to become a group member.

Grading A Group Test

Group quiz grades were almost always the same score for all members. Quizzes were of significantly less value than tests, and I could watch group members interact.

Below is the grading KEY for this exam. Point values for each part of each question are designated.

Students normally took this test around a lab table. 

• On the table was a box with enough "correcting" pens/pencils so each group member had one to use in step 4 above. 
• Once the "correction" time began, all "non-correcting pens/pencils" were traded for "correcting" pens/pencil in the box on the table.
• Only correcting pens were used for crossing out and adding material.
• Student pens were traded back once the exam "packet" was turned in.

When grading the GROUP version of this exam, additions were worth less than an original inclusion of the specific information by a student. 

For example: 

• For Question C, each correct inclusion in the "list" part of the answer is worth one point. If one of those was added in correction pen, it would be worth 1/2 point.
• This rewarded the student and the group without devaluing the effort of students who needed no corrections.

BONUS SECTION

One of the things students like about the group test was that they had a choice of questions to answer. If you’ve never offered choices, I recommend you give it a shot.

Below is an alternative test for similar evolutionary content. This is an individual test.

Notes

1. The content of these questions mirrors the group test content.
2. Questions are clustered by point value.
3. Each "cluster" of questions is diverse in content coverage.
4. Restrictions apply to ensure that every student demonstrates a breadth of understanding.
5. There are enough questions to allow achieving the maximum points possible in a variety of combinations.
6. Students can answer questions that equal fewer than the possible points. If they answer questions totaling more than the points possible, points are subtracted from their final score.

This is another way to reduce some of the anxiety that accompanies testing. 

• I'll do an entire blog post on ways to help students reduce stress later...
• Although some might argue that I was more stress-inducer than stress-reliever...

SEO: Teaching, teachers, grading, homework, reading assignments

Email me: EIT.DrD@gmail.com with questions/ comments.

Or, if you'd like more information or samples of anything described in this series, send an email there!

#Teaching Tip #8 focuses on semester/term/course grades.

Follow me on 

Twitter: @CRDowningAuthor 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuck-downing-97595266/

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I'd appreciate your feedback!

#Teaching Tip #6. Study guides and grading them

This is the sixth of a series of 10 posts.

All 10 posts ran on consecutive weeks. 

As of Labor Day, 2018, all ten of these #Teaching Tip posts are searchable on my blog.

If you're not a teacher and you're reading this,
let a teacher know they are available.

I've been in enough in-service/professional-development sessions to guarantee that the information in this series is better than most of the information you’ll get while sitting through all your teacher workshops this coming school year.

You might be asking yourself,

What gives this guy the nerve to offer ideas about teaching AND commentary on professional development to anyone?

That's a legitimate question.

I invite you to follow this link and check my credentials.

https://www.crdowning.com/engage-in-thinking

As time passed during my teaching career, the biggest change I noticed was in the number of “B” students. These were students who gave it their best shot and missed accumulating enough evidence/points to crack the “A” level.

At some point, it became “okay” to “take a C” if you weren’t getting an A in a class. While that bothers me, it did lead me to some inner musing. I mused until I had one revelation.

I was a good student. My process was to find out what a given teacher wanted and give that to them. I did things I thought were useless. Only once did I go to a teacher and complain.

John Burak was my high school biology teacher. Tough, picky, demanding are the minimal descriptors I’d use for Mr. Burak.

At some point in the class, he assigned chapter outlines as homework. They weren’t going to count much. The intent was to focus our reading. Lots of time invested. Questionable return, in my opinion.

I hate outlining just about everything. I talked with three or four classmates. "We" decided to approach Mr. Burak and see how we could get out of the assignment.

On the day we’d chosen, the four of us approached Mr. Burak at his desk.

“We don’t want to do the chapter outlines,” I said.

Mr. Burak looked at me. I mildly puzzled expression appeared on his face.

“Is there something we can do to not have to outline chapters?” I asked.

“Well, Mr. Downing, I’m not sure who you are including in ‘we,’ but I’ll tell you what. You don’t have to turn in any outlines. If you get an A on every test, you’ll never have to turn them in. If you get less than an A on any test, you’ll have to turn all the outlines in, no matter how many A grades you have.”

It sounded like a good deal to me. I turned to my friends.

There was no one behind me.

I turned back around.

“Thank you. Is this a policy for the whole class?” I asked.

Mr. Burak thought for a moment.

“I don’t see why not.”

I never got less than an A on any test for the rest of the year. I don’t know if anyone else in the class accepted the offer/challenge. I suspect there might have been a couple.

YAWN!

Stay with me. I’m heading toward a point I want to make.

Most students will do something they don’t want to do, if they see a distinct benefit or if they are getting points (a grade) for it.

Whenever the last post of this series occurs, which looks like two from now, I’ll discuss the use of categories in computing semester grades. For right now, you need to know that all the study guide points were worth a fixed amount of the final grade—regardless of the total points by the end of the semester.

Study Guides

When I returned to high school teaching after “professoring” for eight years at Point Loma Nazarene University, the school district I was hired into was opposed to counting homework in the semester grade.

I considered that short-sighted thinking. I still do.

But, I realized that there were some activities and assignments that were for students to learn and others were for assessing learning. In the latter category, some items were for self-assessment and others for “a grade.”

Students did a lot of work in my classes. A significant portion of that work was for learning and self-assessment. Grading it was problematic. In some cases, students were at various stages of understanding when assignments were completed. In other cases, the activity was designed as practice or review. In either case, an “academic” grade wasn’t at that point for the work wasn’t fair.

What follows is the solution my teaching partners in our 9th grade Global Science class devised to address the problem. Over the course of a unit of instruction, a list of assignments that fit the above description was written on the whiteboard.

As another assignment was completed, it joined the list. The last items—numbers 8 and 9 in the photo—were always notes taken during lecture.

Students were directed to keep their study guide assignments in order in the “Study Guide” section of their notebook.

Under Materials to be brought to class daily, you'll find the binder division names.
Note "STUDY GUIDE."

"Review" appears as a category in Sem 2 only in this handout.
The percentages are missing. I don't know why.
I checked and the Review category was worth from 3%-6%, depending on the semester.

Two days before each unit exam, class time was given for students to organize their study guides. Items had to be placed in the order shown on the board.

“With it” students kept the items in the correct order in their notebooks and filled in their copy of the grading sheet as the unit progressed. If the amount of class time provided was insufficient for a student to complete the assembly of the study guide, finishing the task became homework.

Each student added her/his name, the name of the unit, and the names of the items to the grading sheet.

Sample Grading Sheet

The study guide was stapled together with the grading sheet on top.

The expectation was for students to use the packet to study for the exam since it had all the classwork associated with the unit included in it.

On the day of the exam, the study guides were turned in before the exam began.

The day after the exam, class time was taken to “grade” the study guide.

Because of the nature of the inclusions in any study guide, grading was quickly accomplished.

As should be the case in most assignments:

  ü  Not every answer is essential.

  ü  Completeness is important.

  ü  Correctness may not be scored—that’s what the examination is for. In fact, once students realize that not all answers are graded, they are tempted to just answer, “you’ll never grade this one,” or “I don’t know, but that’s okay,” or other such statements. The problem with that strategy is that they don’t know which answer is gradable and which isn’t. Some still “take a chance” and use the above strategy. Most don’t.

Something like the above is on the whiteboard on study guide grading days.

Study guides were distributed randomly.

When a student received a study guide, he/she pulled the grading sheet off and filled in their name and the date at the bottom of the sheet.

They flipped through the study guide while I explained the notations on the board.

“Remember: Any activity that is out of order has two points deducted from the score before you circle any numbers in the scoring column. Activity number one is the Frobush Lab. If all data cells and answers are complete, circle the number 3 on that line. If one, two, three, or four items are not filled in, circle 2. If there are as many empty spaces as filled in spaces, circle 1. If this item is missing, circle 0.”

In the case of the above example, one box had been highlighted by the owner of the packet when the assignment was turned in. I’d graded that box. If no highlighting was evident, the item could not be “complete.”

I acted as judge and jury or issues brought up by the graders.

After all the items were scored, the circled numbers were totaled. That number was written on the score sheet and also on the first page of the study guide.

Comments by the grader could be added. If I’d been asked to judge something, that was often included as a comment. Something like, “Dr. Downing said . . .”

The grade sheets were turned in. The study guides were returned to their owners.

I NEVER GRADED A STUDY GUIDE MYSELF unless the student was absent from the day the study guide was put together until the day it was scored. In fact, I rarely looked at a study guide. After all, I'd already graded some and the rest I'd watched/helped while students checked items in class.

Interestingly enough, I had students who remarked as they turned in their answer sheet, “There was a lot of stuff from the study guide on the test.”

“What are the odds?” I asked in my most incredulous voice.

Most got the hint.

SEO: Teaching, teachers, grading, homework, reading assignments

Email me: EIT.DrD@gmail.com with questions/ comments.
Or, if you'd like more information or samples of anything described in this series, send an email there!

#Teaching Tip #7 includes examples of the “trade/grade” or “self-grade” process and more hints on homework.

Follow me on 

Twitter: @CRDowningAuthor 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuck-downing-97595266/

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I'd appreciate your feedback!