What I have learned is that nouns, adverbs, verbs, and adjectives are not the same old terms I learned back in elementary school. In fact there is so much more to them. The “test” questions or sentences used to determine if the word is noun, verb, adjective, or adverb are new to me, but have sparked my interest because the “test” questions or sentences will come in handy. I am not sure who was bored enough back in the day to have to name every single word by another word, but at least there are simple ways to crack the code. I have also learned about adverbs being mobile words; how in a sentence the adverb can generally be placed anywhere and the meaning of the sentence is still the same.

The reminder of syntax was a nice refreshment. I can remember getting papers back with that word and I remember knowing what the word meant, but I did not know how to fix it. I know I will probably always have a problem when it comes to sentence perfection, but I am working on it!

Also, ever since looking at the newspaper and picking out the parts of speech, I have caught myself doing it on a regular basis. In fact, I’ve caught myself getting the newspaper in general. I think dissecting a piece of writing to find particular errors or demonstrations of particular grammar has helped me to retain the things we have learned so far.

A question that I do have is do the “test” questions or sentences always work when trying to figure out what part of speech a particular word is?

Pertaining to grammar and punctuation I have learned many of the basic things: comma use, contractions, conjunctions, nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on. In fact, I have known these basic terms since grade school. Getting into middle school and high school, I began to learn more complicated grammar and punctuation such as, citation, quotes, headers, footnotes and correct structure for an essay paper. I believe I have gotten those imbedded into my head pretty well and can even say I enjoying doing the technical grammar and punctuation within a paper.

In a most recent lesson, I learned about the new way to use apostrophes. For example, having a name end in “S” and instead of using “ ‘s”, just an apostrophe is used. I had no idea there is an old way and a new way to begin with. I can understand why this is coming into affect because today words are becoming less complicated and pronouncing words need to be quicker. Technology like texting, I am sure has had help in this transformation. Also, one thing I have learned that I will never forget is writing in past, present, or future tense. I have written papers that bounced from past to present and my tenth grade English teacher sat me down and gave me a personal lesson in doing that and I have never forgotten that to this day.

In middle school, my English teacher had the class each day start out by grammatically correcting a sentence that was incorrect on the board. From continually correcting the sentences, grammar has become a pet peeve of mine. Peer reviewing or rereading a paper of my own checking sentences for grammatical errors is the first thing I do.

How can a hyphen turn two words to mean something completely different from what they meant in the first place?

Self Eval

For this semester, I am really hoping to accomplish how to properly use a comma. I tend to over use the comma or do not know exactly where to put them. For example, I tend to put “…,however,...” because when I say the sentence, I pause in both places . The two commas I have been told are unnecessary or are necessary. I tend to not understand the semi colon as well. I get confused on exactly what the semi colon is used for. I have been told that it combines two sentences or ideas, but I also have been told otherwise. I am not sure if the semi colon can be replaced by a comma or even if the semi colon is appropriate and a comma can be used instead. For example, “I have seen the movie twice; just enough to understand.” I am not positive if a semi colon is needed or if a comma would suffice.

I do not fully understand the work of a hyphen. For example, “cross section” and “cross-section.” I do not know the difference really between the two. I do know that the hyphen adds a different understanding to the two words that are placed together. Also, I tend to create many short sentences instead of combining them successfully. For example, “I saw Kim. She came over yesterday. We talked about cars.” I am worried that the sentences will become runons and therefore try to shorten them as much as possible. Therefore, I would like to learn how to combine the sentences correctly without being too short and being too long.

Redundancies tend to be a great problem that I have. For example, “a distance of ten yards” or “an actual fact.” I would like to focus on bettering my word choice and excluding the redundancies. Also, clichés tend to lure me in. For example, “busy as a bee” or “crystal clear,” as well as others. I want to be able to be more creative and have a wider variety of word choice so I do not have to use clichés. Furthermore, I tend to catch myself not using the right word in a situation when it comes to “affect” and “effect.” Overall I would like to be able to strengthen my word vocabulary enough to not have the problems that I do with redundancies and clichés.

Lastly, I am not sure as to when to spell out numbers and when to leave them in number form. I have heard many times that spelling them out ends at 100 and anything above that are put into number form. Also, I have heard that numbers above 10 are to be written out in the number form. I would like to finally learn which is actually correct.