Master English Writing | Syntax, English Grammar, and More

1. Course Overview: Hi there, welcome to the course. It's great to have you. I hope you're ready to take your writing skills to the next level. Now, in this first video, I just like to do a brief overview to talk about some of the things that you're going to take away from this course. Some of the things that we're going to focus on in this course. But first, just a little bit about myself. My name is Luke. I'm an American English teacher. I've been teaching English for about ten years, and in that time, I've been able to help many tens of thousands of students improve their English from grammar to writing skills, to pronunciation, and much, much more. And one interesting thing that I've noticed is that many English learners don't focus on their writing as much as they should. I've met English learners who are at a very high level of spoken English, who came to me and said, Hey, look, I know my speaking is at a pretty high level. But for whatever reason, I'm not really having an impact with my writing. Or people are not really understanding me when I write my colleagues, classmates, whatever, or I sent my cover letter to 20 different employers. And I know I'm qualified for this job. I know my resume, my CV is really good, but I'm not getting any responses. Then they show me what they wrote and it doesn't match their speaking ability. This is a very common thing. Often, often I come across this. And in many cases, they're simple things that can be changed. Simple things that need to be learned to take writing from here to here, to take it from awkward, strange, unclear, confusing, two, very clear, impactful. I understand exactly what you mean. Wow, you must be a smart person. So that's really what this course is about. This course is going to help you become a more natural writer to go from here to here, wherever you're starting to a much higher level. So let's make that our common goal to write more naturally. We want to write naturally. Now what does that mean exactly? That means that when you write something, others understand it easily. It's very clear. They don't feel confused, they don't feel lost. There are no awkward things that catch people's eye in your writing. This is what it means to write naturally, and that includes a lot of different skills. We're going to talk about them in this course. Why, why should you do this? Well, I'm sure you have your own reasons and that's great. But the reality is, if you cannot write, well, then you may be judged as being here. Let's say this is intelligence. This is how good you are at your job. This is how thoughtful you are. This is how creative you are. You're judged as being here when in fact, you're here, you're this smart, you're this creative, you're this thoughtful. But people don't know that because of the way that you write. And that's a sad reality. But often you're writing is the first impression that you give others who have not met you yet. They will form their impression of you based on how well you write. If you write awkwardly or unclearly or unnaturally, then that's the way that you're going to be judged. And then if you meet that person or have more communication with that person in the future, you're going to have to work extra hard to get they're respect to get rid of that judgment that they had at the beginning. On the other hand, if you write very well, very clearly, persuasively, vivid, impactful writing. It's like having a superpower. You can make people feel what you want them to feel. You can communicate things clearly. There are no questions in people's minds. That's what we want. So in this course, we're going to talk about the methods and the knowledge that you need to write naturally. Now there are a lot of different things we're going to talk about. E.g. will focus on how to make sure that your writing doesn't have anything awkward in it. How to make sure that you haven't made any basic mistakes. How to make sure that you're using grammar naturally. How to make sure that your punctuation is correct, that your sentence structure is correct. That's your paragraph structure is correct and well-organized. And if you write things that are longer, that that is organized and things flow smoothly and naturally. That your syntax is good. Syntax is something we're going to spend quite a bit of time focusing on in this course, all of these things and more we're going to talk about. You're going to learn and you're going to see real-life examples and have ways to practice each of the things that you learn. Then we're going to go into exercises or practice that you can do to apply what you're learning, to really use what you're learning so that you can actually master it. To become a master of these skills means developing the habits to use them without thinking, which is really what you want. You don't want to have to try to remember what you learned in that course that you took six months ago? No. It needs to be something that you can use immediately when you need it. Habit to master these skills is to practice them. So the exercises we cover, if you do them, are going to help you build out those habits so that you can become a powerful, confident rider. Now why does confidence matter? Think about anything you're good at. What are you good at when you do that thing that you're really good at? Do you feel relaxed? Do you feel confident? Does that confident feeling allow you to do that really well? Yes. Yes. If you feel confident, then you don't need to be afraid of changing something. Who can I say this like that? Well, my breaking some rule. Oh, can I, can I adjust this sentence? Move the order around? What if I take this comma and move it over there? I know I probably shouldn't do that. Or is this clear? Should I start with this sentence or start with another one? I don't know what did I do? Instead, you can decide how you want your reader to feel. You can decide exactly what you want them to understand. You can decide exactly how to say things so that what you think is exactly what they understand. And that makes you a very powerful writer when you have all of the methods and the knowledge that you need to write, well, then you can create whatever you want. You can influence people, you can persuade people. You can build a beautiful story. You can do whatever you want in the medium of writing. And that is very powerful. And that's what you're going to learn in this course if you work hard. So I hope you're ready to get started. I hope you're excited and I will see you in the next video. 2. Essential Best Practices: We've talked about already what we're going to cover in this course. Now, before we get into the fundamentals of improving your writing, writing more clearly, I like to just go over a few best practices. Now of course, as we get into the course, we'll talk about these things in more detail with examples. It will be much more clear. But I just want to talk through these simple things because they are so important and you can start them right now. You can say to yourself, I will do these things starting now. I will think about these things when I'm writing starting now. So let's quickly go through them before we get into the fundamentals writers read. Now, that does not just mean professional writers and they read books. That means everyone who writes well, if you write well, part of that whole equation, part of that process of learning to be a good writer is the exposure to the language that you get when you read. That doesn't mean studying every sentence. Maybe that's something that we can talk about later. Actually studying a sentence. What it means is absorbing the language, taking it in, getting a feeling for what good English looks like and what not so good English looks like. Because really when it comes to writing, It's not just about rules. Hey, follow these clear rules and your writing will be amazing. There are so many native English speakers who don't write very well. It's true. But those who do right? Well, whatever the things that you will find when you ask them, hey, what did you do to get better, to improve your writing or what do you continue to do? I read, I read a lot and it's kind of hard to say exactly how reading regularly corresponds to or leads to better writing. But it does. So read, read, increase your exposure. Get a sense for beyond just the rules, what good writing looks like. And you'll develop a kind of, let's call it an intuition. That just seems right. That's much more clear. Well, that's a really nice sentence. Well, I think I said that really well. This is exactly how I want it to say it. The thought that I had in my mind matches what is on the screen or on the page. That's something that requires intuition. And to get that you need exposure and you need to go way beyond just the rules. I'd like you to get out of this way of thinking of learning a language is about rules. Rules only. When it comes to good writing. Something can be perfect grammatically and still not clear. Still not very good. Still not express what you want to express in the way that you want to express it. So yes, rules are important. Grammar is important, but also this thing which is kind of, let's call it fuzzy, maybe not so clear, not so easy to define. Still extremely important. What should you read? Read what you enjoy. Because if you read what you hate, you'll give it up quickly. But if you read what you enjoy, if you enjoy reading, whether it's fiction, non-fiction, even poetry, magazine articles, articles, online, blog posts, message boards, well, maybe not message ports. People are pretty lazy writers in message boards. That might not be the best way. Message boards and forums. But articles and books and things like that are a great way to absorb the language and absorb structures. And I'm not going to tell you exactly what you must read, what you should read, because it can all be useful. It's all part of this process of exposure and of absorbing, absorbing the language. If you want to be good at something, you have to see examples of what is good, right? That seems obvious, but so many people don't read and it really amazes me. Now, related to this is absorbing structures. This is more than just reading and getting a feeling for the language. This is really about syntax. Syntax, meaning the kinds of sentences we use, the variation of sentences we use, how we use the sentence structure to say what we want to say. I always have the same sentence structure. That's going to be very boring. But how do you learn about syntax? How do you improve your syntax? We have to play around, but it's good to have examples of what good syntax looks like. You can get that from what you're reading passively, although that might be a slower way of doing it, It's also important to stop and pay attention to interesting structures that you come across. Now I write structures here because I'm not only talking about whole sentences. Maybe you see a little piece of grammar that you think is interesting in a sentence, and you just want to focus on that. Okay, that's fine. What if I don't know what it's called? That's okay. If you understand the sentence and you can see how this little piece of grammar works in the sentence. Maybe you can make a similar one. So you can learn syntax. You can learn about different kinds of structures, different kinds of sentences, simply by noticing them. Maybe writing them down, maybe saving them somewhere, and maybe playing with your own that are similar to those. And the reason I mentioned that, separate from reading is that when you're reading, you're really just trying to enjoy yourself. I just want to follow this character, see what happens, right? I don't want to pay attention to every sentence, but, but doing it a little bit more actively, paying attention to the structure. Maybe after you've read the story. Underlining a few sentences will allow you to discover new kinds of structures that you may not have known and to improve your own syntax naturally without having to study a grammar book or even know what this little piece of grammar is called. So these are kind of two different things, although they're closely connected. Check your work. I know it's really obvious, but it's one of the main reasons that we make mistakes. That we write an email and then later we'd read it and we say, Oh, or maybe someone check something for us or read something we wrote and they say, Hey, I saw this mistake here. And we say, Oh, it happens because we're not careful enough, not because we don't know what's correct often. Now I'm not saying that you know everything. But going back and reading what you just wrote can be a very powerful way, is a very powerful way to take your writing, at least from here to here. Some really obvious things that you can just fix. And it's based on what you already know. Oh, I use the wrong verb tense actually, I know that it should be past tense, not present tense or whatever. But just being careful can make a huge difference. So write a sentence, write a paragraph, go back and read it slowly. And I recommend that you do this out loud. And if you find something, fix it, It's that simple. I do the same thing. Whenever I write something, I make mistakes all the time. So I go back, read it again and I correct things or it doesn't have to be only corrections. I may word something slightly differently. I may move something around. I may combine two sentences or break something into two sentences to make it more clear. When I do that, I improve my writing. Sometimes I do it twice. Then I can make it really good. I can make it really clear, depends on my time, of course, but it is the one thing that you can start doing right now, which can take your writing from here wherever it is to hear a bit better. What about these things? Can we use, should we use tools? Spell checkers, grammar checkers, those sorts of things? Do they work? Just as long as you're aware that generally they don't catch everything. So there's one that's quite popular right now called Grammarly. Grammarly or tools like it. There are tons of them out there. They can identify things that you may not have noticed, spelling of words, improper use of a comma, something like that. Oh, you don't need a comma there. Incorrect punctuation. These sorts of things. Now, generally speaking, these are not going to tell you how to be a better writer. So you can write long and unclear sentences that are absolutely grammatically correct. But still, this is not great writing. Often something like this will not do that for you. Now. Some of them are quite good and they're getting better at that too. But often it's just a second check for you to point out some of the mistakes that you may have made. Now maybe it is confused and actually you're correct. So sometimes it gets something wrong and there are tons of different tools out there. But I think overall, it's good to use these kinds of tools. I usually use this one or some of the other ones just to have that second check. Oh, I didn't notice that. There's a thing I want to fix. And sometimes they'll just ignore it because I know what I want to say. You can't let a tool be your boss. Don't let the tool tell you what to do. Use the tool to improve your awareness of things and to catch things. But don't let it tell you how to say what you want to say. 3. Correcting and Punctuation: When you're checking, it's important to be as much as possible objective. Now, what does that mean to be objective? That means to see it as it is and not see it in a very personal way or a way which is very close to you. Have you ever worked on something for several months and then because you've been working on it for so long, you can't really see if it's good or bad anymore at all because you're too close to it. Your perspective. Your perspective is not objective. You have no idea. Could be terrible, it could be the most genius thing you've ever done. It's hard to tell. I've been working on it for several months. I don t know. Well, that can happen with writing too. We are ourselves. We live inside our own heads. And so often we see things from a certain perspective which is not objective. So it can be useful to pretend. Try to put yourself in that way of thinking that perspective. To pretend that you or someone else, that it is other, other than your own, that you are not the one who wrote it, but you're checking a friend's writing. If your friend were to give you something that they wrote. And then they said, Hey, could you could you review this for me? Let me know if I could improve anything mistakes or any kind of improvements. You'd say, Okay, and you'd probably find a few things. So I think you could change the order of these sentences, or I think you could simplify this, or maybe you have something that's redundant. By the way, we'll talk about redundancy later in the course. Whatever it may be. Why is it that it's harder to do that for your own writing? Because we live inside our own heads, simple enough. But if you try to change your perspective and think of it as something other than your own. It will be easier to catch things, easier to notice things that can be improved. You know what you meant when you wrote this. Try to see it as someone else might see it. Someone who doesn't know what you meant before you wrote it. Now that's just a change in perspective and I know that's not easy to do. But if you can get closer to that, then you'll catch things that you wouldn't otherwise have found. Now, what about perfect punctuation? Why do I even mentioned perfect punctuation? Punctuation, by the way, well, I'm sure you know it's commas periods, exclamation marks that we use in our writing to say when a sentence has ended, or to pause or to separate two clauses are two parts of a sentence. This kind of thing, to show excitement, to ask a question and so on. Why do I mention this? Because it is the single most common issue that I have noticed among non-native English speakers in their writing. The single most common issue I've met, very good second language English speakers. They speak very well who have very poor writing, largely due to punctuation. And you may think, okay, but it doesn't really matter. It's just a period. If it's a space and then a period and then a space. So what does it matter? No, there's no space before a period. Ever. Not ever, never, ever. So just remember that. And does it matter? Yes, it matters. Native English speakers will see that and say, Oh, that's not professional. If you send your resume or something and it has punctuation mistakes, that resume goes directly in the trash. If I read an email from someone and it doesn't have good punctuation. I don't take them very seriously because for whatever reason, I see that as laziness. Oh, you can't even take the time to have perfect punctuation. It's easy. It's not hard. You have a space in front of the period. Why should I take this email seriously if you're not taking it seriously? And that's really what I think, and it's not just me. Many native English speakers will feel the same way. So all you have to do is have perfect punctuation. And it's not that hard. Things like this. No space in front of a period. One space after new sentence begins with a capital letter. Is it that hard to capitalize new sentences? No. Is it that hard to get the spacing right before and after a period or a comma? No. These are basic rules. You probably already know them. If you don't know them, you can learn them in five-minutes or 10 min. And once you know them, you know them, then you can just do them. Then when you send an e-mail, when you write something, when you send a resume, when you write an essay, when you write an article, whatever, people are going to take you seriously. And this is a huge thing, a huge issue. These small things can be very big issues because they make other people have a view about us. They make other people form an opinion about us, even if it's a small thing. Now, if you're still saying to yourself, doesn't really matter. It's not a big deal, just punctuation. Who cares? It's such a small thing. Let me give you an example. Every culture has norms. Every culture has norms. And there are certain things that are okay in some cultures that are not okay in others. So e.g. burping. In some cultures, if you burp, that's totally fine. But you burp. If you're sitting at the table and you burp around others, no big deal. But in others, when you do it, people feel, how could you do that at the table? That's so rude. They feel uncomfortable. Now that's not to say one culture is better than another. I don t think that. But what you've done there is broken a norm. You've broken a norm, and that has made people feel uncomfortable and they might be forming judgments about you. If you walk into a room and you have to sneeze and you just sneeze in the open without covering your mouth. To the sneeze goes everywhere. Most people are going to feel very uncomfortable about that, right? Not covering or not covering, not doing something to prevent the sneeze from filling the room, which is disgusting, right? It's the same kind of thing. It's breaking a norm. That's the kind of thing that it is. So I know I've talked enough about it. Perfect punctuation. Perfect punctuation. Perfect punctuation. It's a must. 4. Mindset: Now we've talked about the importance of absorbing language and reading. We've talked about checking your work. There are two more things I want to focus on quickly before we get into the fundamentals of writing. The first being writing as play. Actually, if you think of writing as play, it might help you relax a bit. There is not only one way to write something. There is not only one way to describe something. There is not only one way to express a thought that you may be having. Each of us has a different way to express ourselves when we use our faces, right? If we feel surprised or whatever, It's the same thing for writing. So if you're trying to arrive at the answer, you're thinking about it the wrong way. It's not like that. When it comes to writing. There isn't an answer. There are 1,000 answers. Now some answers are more clear than others. Some answers are funnier than others. Some answers are more colorful than others, more vivid. Some answers are simpler than others. Some answers are more complex than others. There are thousands, hundreds, thousands, whatever of answers. There are many answers when it comes to the question of what is the best way to express this, There's not only one answer. And so it's important to think of writing as play. What if I set it this way? What if I change the order of these things? What if I use this grammar? What if I play with this syntax? What if I break this into three sentences? What if I tried to combine this into one giant sentence? What if I add some different adjectives? What if I take out all the adjectives? What if I use different adverbs? What if I have more variation and the different kinds of nouns that I use? All of these things and much more, which we're going to talk about in this course, are things that you should consider when you're writing. And of course, a lot of it has to do with this intuition of getting a sense of feeling for what good writing looks like. But it also has to do with being careful. It also has to do with practice, which is extremely important. It has to do with practice. And it has to do with this attitude of considering what you write as play. What is your goal? I want to say this as clearly and simply as possible, okay? If I want to do that, What should I do? How should I say it? Well, I've written three sentences here and they're kind of redundant. That means I've said something that repeats another thing I already said. So why don't I just delete that and say at once clearly with two sentences. Okay, I'll try that. Oh, that's much better if that feels right. That's closer to what I meant to say. And it feels closer to how I'm thinking about it in my head. This is part of the play process. So I want you to think of writing as play because it is, It's playful. It should be playful and it can be very fun if you start to like writing. If you start to enjoy the process of writing, practice writing stories, practice writing diaries, practice writing blogs or whatever. Then you're writing is going to improve a lot. You're going to be practicing for fun. And if you can start practicing for fun and you're reading for fun. So you're increasing your exposure. You're absorbing more of the language you're writing is going to improve even more and more quickly. And the last thing I want to quickly mention before we get to the next lesson is that everything is a story. Or at least that's how you should think of it when you're trying to express something. Now I don't mean story in the very narrow sense of there once was a farmer named Jane, that kind of thing. That too, but also in a much broader sense. What you're trying to do is create a thing that has a beginning, middle, and end. There's a whole flow to the idea that you have. Even if it's just a couple of sentences, even if it's a boring instruction manual. Think about the structure of the whole thing. What is their whole journey through what you're writing? Where do you want them to begin? And then where should they go next? And then how do you want it to end up in here? How do you want them to feel when they finish reading what you wrote? Whatever the purpose may be. So again, I'm not speaking of a story in a very small and narrow sense, but a very broad sense. Thinking of it that way keeps you away from this. And then thing or a sequence of, and then there's another sentence, another sentence, and other sentence. And I'm not really thinking about how the whole picture fits together. I'm not really thinking about progression. But if you're thinking about progression, if you're thinking about flow, if you're thinking about your reader's experience as they read what you wrote, then you're thinking of it as a story and that's what I mean here. Now, this is just a perspective that I want you to consider. Thinking of what you write in this way as a story with progression, not just another sentence and another sentence and another sentence. Thinking about the journey of the idea from the beginning to the end will really help you to keep in mind what you're doing. What you're doing when you're writing is you're communicating. You're expressing your thoughts and thoughts. Often happened in that sort of storyline way as a progression. So just keep this idea in the back of your mind. Whether you're writing an email for work or you're writing a diary, whatever it may be, just keep that in the back of your mind and you'll find, it helps you to give a little bit more depth and structure, a sense of progression to whatever you write. And you'll see how that applies to things that we focus on throughout the course. Alright, so that's it for the best practices. Let me know if you have any questions and I will see you in the next lesson. 5. An Example of Unclear Writing: In this section of the course, we're going to be focused on the fundamentals of writing. What does that mean exactly? We're gonna talk about the things that you have to do. If you want to have clear writing that people can easily understand. That sounds good. That is correct. That allows you to express your thoughts in a way that you feel really represents you. What do you think? What you feel, how you naturally express yourself in your language? There are many different pieces to this, but we're going to start with clarity. How to write clearly and what clear and unclear writing looks like and why unclear writing is unclear. Can you have unclear writing? That means writing that is a little confusing. That's kind of hard to understand. That's a little bit mixed up. Without making a mistake. Yes, you can. So it's not just about being wrong. Clear writing includes some things that you have to avoid and some things that you have to make sure you do. So that when someone reads what you wrote, they say, huh, I get it. That's very clear, makes perfect sense. So here's what we're going to do. First. We're going to go through an example of some unclear writing. Then we'll look at an example of some much clearer writing, a clearer version of the same basic thing. Then we're going to talk about the things that you should do and the things that you should avoid so that you can write clearly. But it's important for us to go through an example first so that we can get a feel for what it means to write something unclearly. What it means to write something. Clearly. I'm going to be using my red pen as we go through this because we're going to be talking about things that are not so good which make a writing not clear. If you asked me whether I want a computer or not, I would tell you that I would like one. Now, the first thing that sticks out to me is this wood. And then another would write after it very close together. Unless we really need to do it. It can be a little awkward to have those so close. Now, what about this one? If you asked me whether I want a computer or not. Well, do we need to have the or not there? If we remove it? Does it keep its meaning? If you asked me whether I want a computer, I would tell you that I would like one. Keeps its meaning so we can maybe cut that out. What about this? I would like one is in that repeating it. Do we have to even say it? Couldn't we just say that I would because wood means yes. Okay. So we're making it simpler, but that doesn't mean that's the sentence we should use. Now, I have a bigger issue with this sentence. And the issue that I have is that it's too wordy. What does that mean? What that means is, I'm saying what I could say in a much simpler way. Using a lot of words. I'm using way more words than I need to use to express myself. So don't add what doesn't need to be added. If you're talking about a more complicated thing than maybe you would use this structure if you had asked me three years ago when I thought about this, I would have said. But now that you're asking me, after I've had this near-death experience, now I'm starting to change my view and I think this, this is a more complicated thing. But what we're talking about here is a very simple idea. It's not a very complicated thing. I like computers is really the meaning. I'm not saying we have to say it like this, but this whole first sentence, I would say we need to throw out and change simply because we're saying a simple idea in a very long and complicated way. We're adding complexity, adding and for writing. That is a no-no. Unless we know exactly why we're doing it. Almost everyone loves electronics and can stay on them for hours and hours. But some people don't know what harm they can bring to our bodies. Alright, Do we have any issues here? Well, do we need to say bodies or can we just say but harm they can bring to us? Do we need to say to us, maybe cut that out. They can bring, alright, maybe that's too much. Some don't know what harm they can bring. Are we saying they as people? Are we saying they as electronics? Now, I know we know it's about the electronics. But still someone could think if they were reading it quickly, where the people or the electronics are causing the harm to our bodies. So that's a little confusing. Is it this noun or this noun that they is talking about? Alright, that's a perfectly reasonable issue. Some people don't know what harm they can bring to our bodies. Isn't that a simple idea? Isn't there a simple word that we could use to replace that? Couldn't we probably just use a word like harmful, dangerous, or something like that to represent or say that whole idea. Isn't this also very wordy? Maybe we have to throw out the whole thing and say it in a completely different way. What about this part? Almost everyone loves electronics and can stay on them for hours. But if they love electronics, then they would probably stay on them for hours. So isn't that a little redundant? Redundant means it doesn't need to be said that if they love them, they will stay on them for hours. And so couldn't we just talk about how much time people spend using them rather than saying that they use them and they loved them. Again too much for what we're trying to say. We're trying to say simple thing and we're using a bunch of words to say it. Does that mean you can never use a lot of words to say something? No. But there should be a reason for doing that. You should know exactly why you're doing that. And it shouldn't be because you just don't know how to say it in a simple way. So we're going to talk about this, but the general rule is simple, simple, simple. Keep it simple, as simple as you can and only add when you know exactly why you're adding. So while we could say almost everyone uses electronics for hours and hours, we can probably throw it out and say something different. That's more clear. I would say that especially students shouldn't have computers at school since they will waste so much time on them. You feel tired? I feel tired. Do we need to say, I would say or can we remove? I would say because if we just say, students shouldn't have computers, do we really need to say this beginning part? I would say that especially students, especially students in particular, shouldn't have computers. Okay. Well, that makes more sense to me. That's also very clear and doesn't really add much to say all of this stuff at the beginning. Simplify. Students shouldn't have computers at school since they will waste. This, since they will waste is such a an absolute statement of fact. Always, it makes it sound like you're saying that it will be true 100% of the time, always and forever. If a student has a computer at school, always and forever, they will waste their time. Wow, that's a very, it's a very absolute statement. And maybe the bigger problem is that it jumps very quickly. We're talking about bodies here, and then it goes directly to students. Wait a second. Are we talking about how healthy electronics are we talking about how electronics affects students? I'm a little confused. So it's a little bit sudden as well. It doesn't flow very well from idea to idea. This is maybe about our structure. Maybe we have a structure issue that we're not allowing one idea to move naturally into the other. We're just making statements. And this one is very absolute and it's a sudden thing. So people are shocked by it because wait, I thought, I thought we were talking about our bodies and now we're talking about students. Hold on, hold on. You're losing me. One. Wordiness. Absolute statements, sudden statements that aren't very clearly linked to the one that came before. There are quite a few issues here. People who use computers too much can also cause addiction, which causes mental problems. Alright, again, we have this issue of cause, cause where we're repeating the same word very close together for no clear reason. Also, we're talking about the cause of something. And then the cause of something comes after this noun that were mentioning. So there's this activity. This is a little confusing for a couple of reasons. So what exactly is happening here? Is it the people using computers causing things to happen to another group of people? Or are they causing it to happen to themselves? And is it the activity that they're doing that's causing it or is it just them that's doing it? If it's just them than the who use computers too much, it's just a, just a detail about them and has nothing to do with them causing addiction. So it's very confusing, right? What is going on here? Now if we really think about it, we can figure it out. What they mean to say is if you use computers too much, then for use electronics too much or whatever, then it's going to cause addiction in yourself, perhaps. But we have to do the hard work. So another clear rule which we can take away from this besides, don't be too wordy. Besides, don't repeat words too often would be what? Don't make your reader do the work. If your reader has to do mental work to figure out what you mean. Oh, okay. That, that's what they must have meant. This one, I figured it out. Then you've failed. That means you've said something which could have different meanings. And only after thinking about it a lot, we're reader. Finally hopefully figure out what you really meant because this can have different meanings grammatically, it's not good. Now, maybe that's good for poetry if you want to create an image or write something beautifully. But often when we're writing poetry. When we write poetry, we often want to create an image. We often want people to try to guess which meaning we really mean. And that can be a very good thing. But if you're trying to explain your opinion, if you're trying to describe something, you're trying to make sure your colleague knows what you mean in an e-mail. You can't do that. So make sure that the sentence you use has one meaning. And they don't need to read it twice in order to get that meaning. So for these reasons and a few more that we're going to talk about when we go over the things to avoid and the things to do for clear writing, this is not good. This is not good. So now what we have to do is look at a better example. I don't see a good example because if I say this is good and you might start to get into that idea of, oh, there's one right answer. There isn't one. What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to take this and do a variation. This is my challenge to you. Do a variation of this That's more clear. Keep in mind that it should be less wordy. That it shouldn't have confusing sentences that could mean more than one thing. That it shouldn't have too many repeated words. That maybe many of these sentences, rather than being fixed, should be completely thrown out. Because It's a simple idea that we're trying to explain. And we can say it in a simpler way. Do your own variation, make sure you go back and read it a couple of times. Get it as clear and concise as you can. Simple is good. Simple means fewer misunderstandings. Simple writing is good. Writing. 6. Clarifying Unclear Writing: Now that we've looked at are not so clear example, let's look at a variation of that same basic ideas, which is hopefully much more clear. We're going to read through it and we'll see if we can see what makes it more clear. Here we go. Like most people, I wouldn't say no to a new computer. But So this but here tells me I'm going to change and my main focus will be on the negative aspects. However, I do need to mention that I liked computers. Computers are good. We don't want to spend too much time on that to have this very long sentence or two sentences saying this thing that really we want to get over as quickly as possible. Let's just quickly say I liked computers and then move on to the main topic. And that's what we've done here. Like most people, I wouldn't say no to a new computer. Alright, we're done. Now the bot marks the beginning the change, the shift to our focus, which is the negatives. But we should also acknowledge the downsides of using them. Now, does this them connect to other things? Maybe it's connected to people. Well, we don't really talk about using people in this way. So it can't really be anything other than computers. So this them can't point to more than one thing. This them is definitely connected to computer, so it's okay if we use them. Again, it has to be very clear if we say them, which now and are we talking about? And if there's any question, if it could be one or the other, could lead to a lot of confusion. It's a known fact that computer addiction and overuse can lead to both physical and mental problems. So if you remember, we talked about using computers for hours and hours, and then we mentioned students, and then we went back to addiction. And it was mixed between students and between the problems like addiction causing problems with our emotions and our bodies. Alright, well, let's just say the problems upfront. It's a known fact. What's a known fact? That computer addiction and overuse, these are the two things. Using them too much and being addicted to them can lead to both physical and mental problems. We've stated the issue right from the start. Now there's no confusion. Now, we can move on. So if we talk about students now, it makes more sense. It's not as sudden. It's not as abrupt for students than we could give any example there for the elderly, for students in my view, or for me or in my use. We could talk about any different thing there because we've made the point about the main issues for students. The main issue is wasted time. Does that mean that all students always waste time when they use computers? Is that an absolute statements that might be a little distracting? No. A common issue. Often students waste time. It's an issue. Doesn't mean they only waste time though, right? More time is spent on games and social media than doing school assignments. So the flow is a lot better or moving from a statement of the main issues, the main problems, to an example issue, or an example problem being the issue with students that sometimes they waste time and for that reason the whole thing feels like it flows. It feels complete. It doesn't jump back and forth between ideas. Nothing feels sudden. There aren't too many repeated words. And very importantly, it's a lot shorter because it doesn't need to be long. We don't need to make long complicated sentences to say this fairly simple thing, to express ourselves, but we can think of it as a story. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. What's the beginning? The beginning is a statement, hey, I like computers. The middle is, these are the main issues, big problems. The end is, and here's a more specific thing that I want to talk about. And I could go on and talk about more, more specific things if I want to. Now, because I have a better structure, because it flows better. So this is just one way to do it. This is just one variation. There are thousands of other ways to express the same basic things. Again, I want you to think of it as play and actually play around with it when you make your own variations. Now that we've looked at these examples, let's review the things that we should do and the things that we should avoid if we want to have clear writing. 7. How to Write Clearly: Part 1: So we went over most of these as we were going through our two examples, but let's just cover them all here together. The things to keep in mind, the things to avoid, the things to do. If you want to have clear writing tips for writing clarity. Most of the time, communication of meaning is the purpose of writing. And for that reason, you want to always remember that your goal is to be understood and not to make the other person who's reading your writing think, wow, what a beautiful adjective or this is a complicated sentence. You don't want to impress them with your long complicated sentences that they have to spend 10 min thinking about. You don't want to impress them with this really long, huge word that maybe they know, maybe they don't know, but maybe you don't know very well. You're not quite sure how to use it, whatever it is, your goal is not to impress them in that way. Your goal is for them to say, I got it Very clear, I understand completely. That's your goal. Now if you're writing poetry, different story, you can break all the rules almost when you're writing poetry. But we're not talking about poetry in this course. We're talking about writing. Well, which means that you should always be thinking. I want to make sure everybody understands. And that's what I right, doesn't have two meanings are three meanings. It's not a super long sentence because I wanted to see if I can make a super long sentence. Have a simple thing to say. So I'll say it's simply, that's what you should focus on. Simplicity is the key to clarity. If it's complicated and long when it doesn't need to be, it's bad. Unless you know exactly why you're making it long and complicated. It should be a very, very clear specific reason. If not put all your energy into keeping it as simple as possible. And you might think, oh, but if it's simple, people will judge me for simple writing. No, no, no, no. People will be very glad that you write simply. People will understand you and people will respect you for communicating. Well. Being an impressive rider does not mean making things complicated. It means being simple. Then complexity comes over time with different types of communication, but the best writing is simple. Avoid using the same word too often. That's simple. We're going to talk about repetition. Next. We'll look at what exactly that means. But just keep that in mind if you're using a word too often, especially if it's in the same sentence. Always ask yourself, why am I using the same word twice? Do I know why I'm doing it? Do I have to do it? Can I do something else? Is there a better way to do it? A sentence should not have multiple meanings. If I can understand the sentence that you wrote three or four different ways and I have to do the hard work to understand it. Then again, you failed as a writer. I shouldn't have to do the hard work for you. I shouldn't have to make it clear to myself for you. I should be able to read it once and say, bingo, Got it. Next sentence, keep going. That's the goal. So if you write a sentence and then you read it back and you realize, Oh wait a second, this could be about this noun or that noun, or this noun or whatever, and has multiple possible meanings. Try again, delete it. Start fresh, see if you can make it so that it has one possible meaning no more. Now, this is not so much a rule, but just a general thing to keep in mind as you're writing, have an intention behind each sentence. What does that mean? Well, remember the not so good example that we talked about. If you asked me whether I want a computer or not, I would tell you that I would like one. What is your intention? My intention is what am I trying to do with the sentence? I'm I'm trying to tell people that yes, computers are good. I liked computers. And then I'm going to change topics and I'm going to talk about some of the negative things, some of the downsides. So my intention is to make sure people know that I don't just hate computers. Okay. Is this very long sentence where I almost tell a whole story about someone asking me if I want a computer, is that accomplishing? My intention? Is that helping me get there? Maybe. But there's a much better way to do it. Because it's not the point of what I'm writing. The point of what I'm writing is the next thing I say. I want to say that first piece. The, hey, I like computers as simply as possible. And maybe it's just, Hey, I like computers, but that's maybe that's okay. Maybe that's better. In fact, I think it's a lot better. So always keep that in mind as you're writing. What is my intention? Why am I writing this sentence? What am I trying to do by writing it? And then answering that question to yourself should help you see if the sentence that you have here or the sentence that you're thinking about using is right. And if it's way more than is needed to actually accomplish, what do you intend to do? Then change it and do something else and remember it's play. And that's a very general thing I know. But keeping that in mind can help you keep things simple. Keeping that in mind can help you avoid being too redundant or too wordy, and can help ensure that your writing is very clear. 8. How to Write Clearly: Part 2: Don't use words and phrasing that you're not sure about. If you recently learned something, but you don't quite get how it's used. Don't try that out in your email to your colleagues. Now, if you're just practicing by yourself and you're trying to get a feel for a new type of sentence, new syntax, grammar, phrase, new word, whatever it is. And you're playing by yourself, then yeah, go crazy. Play around with it. Ask your friend for some feedback, get some help with it. Sure, That's great. But if you're communicating with others, if that's your goal, then don't try out new stuff. It's better to use a word that you're absolutely sure of than a word that you're not totally clear on. Because a lot of words have 345-67-8910 different meanings. What if you're using a word that you're not sure about? And it means something that you don't quite really realized that it means. And then it causes some awkwardness. That could be bad. This happens very often where you look up a word in the dictionary and immediately use it. And then the person reading your email goes, what? Actually that has a very different meaning that you didn't know. So use words that you're sure about, use phrases or phrasing that you're sure about that you're confident of. And then play around with the things that you're learning by yourself, then you can do whatever you like. And as you play around with those things, you'll get some confidence with those words are with that phrasing, then you can start using those new things that your little more confident about in your emails or in your articles, or whatever you happen to be writing. Consider who will be reading your work. This is important. Who are you writing to? Who's going to be reading this? You're writing an answer to a question. Are you writing an email to a colleague who is at your same level who understands everything that you understand. You're writing an email to someone you don't know. You're writing an email to a kid. Or the people who are reading this non native English speakers. Are they native English speakers? Just think about your audience and lead your audience, guide your writing decisions. Is this for one person? Is this 400 people? If it's for 100 people and you don't know exactly who all of those hundred people are, then you definitely want to make sure that your writing is as simple as possible. To avoid any kind of misunderstanding. 100 different people should be able to read this and come away with the same understanding. But if you're writing to a colleague and you have the same kind of industry knowledge, special words and terms than maybe you don't need to be as polite. Say, maybe you can use more complicated words. Maybe you can keep your emails simpler, that sort of thing. So I'm not saying exactly how you should write for each different audience. I'm just saying, think about that before you start, just ask yourself before you start writing anything, who will read this and allow that thought to be in your mind as you write. That's it. Also, remember that your reader does not live inside of your head. So be careful about assumptions that you're making that might cause confusion. A perfect example would be a sentence that has three different meanings as we looked at in the example that we did. Oh, yeah, well, I meant that. Yes, but they don t know that you meant that your writing is the thing that stands between you and others. It is the thing that you put out there. But once you put it out there for others to understand, you are now not part of the conversation often. So they have to understand based only on what you wrote. Whether it's a sentence with many different meanings, or your word choice, or the choice of an idiom, or whatever it may be. Just remember when you're writing that thought that we have oh, yes. But this is what I mean because I'm me. That thought that we have doesn't stick to the words. It stays in our heads as the writer. And the other people only have the words that you put out there as a way to understand what's in your head. So don't just assume people will understand. Try to make it as simple as possible. Try to make it as clear as possible. This is just another way to say the main point that simplicity is the key to clarity. And simplicity should be devoid of assumptions. That means it should have no assumptions that you're making about what I'm sure people will probably understand when they read this. No, no. Is it clear or not? If someone were reading this 100 years from now, would they understand it or not? Or do they have to live in your head to understand it? If they have to live inside your head in order to completely understand it, keep working on it, keep simplifying it. Change it, start over until you don't have to be there to explain it to them. People don't have to jump inside your head to understand completely. And if they do, then you've failed. Finally, when you're done, stop. There is often this feeling we get. I'm not really sure if I really made my point in my first two sentences, I'd have to actually be there to explain what I meant. Okay, well, that's this one. That's not good. So what I'll do is because I can't be there. What I'll do is I'll explain a little bit more. I'll give more detail so that I can make sure I can make sure they understand. This is the wrong way to think. Now, it is often necessary to go into detail, to add detail to a main point that's very broad. To give an example, to clarify something or make something clear. All of those things are very good, necessary, and important. But if you feel that you have to explain more because you're not sure if what you said before is clear enough, then you've already failed. Don't do that. That's adding unnecessary details. Details are necessary, but that is unnecessary. So what should you do? Focus on making those two sentences more clear. Spend more time with them. Start over, play with it a little bit more until it expresses what you want to express clearly and simply. And once you've done that and you feel confident that this cannot be misunderstood, stop this feeling of, Oh, if I just say a little more, maybe it's better. I should just add a few more things. This is not a strength. This is a weakness when it comes to writing. You need to be confident in what you've done. You need to work with what you've written and not be afraid to start over when that's the right thing to do. And then stop. And stopping means, hey, this is as good as I can make it. This is my best work. I can't write more clearly than this. It's not longer than it needs to be. There isn't confusing grammar here. I haven't used words and phrases that I'm not quite sure about. This is my best work. Once you've done that, then you're done just like this lesson. So I hope these are helpful. I hope the examples have been useful. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about repetition and redundancy. And of course we'll look at some examples as well. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 9. What Redundancy and Repetition Look Like: In this lesson, we're going to focus on redundancy and repetition. These are two things that you need to be very aware of, very careful about when you're writing. Now, that does not mean that you can never repeat a word. That does not mean that you can't say something twice in different ways. But we have to be aware of this because if we don t know that we're doing it, we might do it too much. And it can lead to confusion. It can lead to people feeling that your writing is just not clear. So just to be clear, what is redundancy and what is repetition? Redundancy is when you've said something that you don't have to say because in another way, you've already said it. And we'll look at a quick example of that. Repetition is simply using exactly the same word or the same phrase very close together unconsciously. Now, again, that doesn't mean you can't do it and sometimes you can't avoid it. Especially when it comes to things like preposition two of four. Often we can't avoid using these close together. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. I need to know what they're going to do. 22. Is that okay? I think it's okay. I think that's okay. So let's look at a few things to keep in mind about redundancy and repetition. We'll go over these with examples, and then we'll look at two full examples like we did last time. One, not so good. The next one, at least better. So let's, let's just read this first example here and see if you can notice the issue. If you feel you need to lose weight because you're fatter than you'd like to be. And then we would maybe give some advice there. What's the problem? If you feel you need to lose weight? Because you're fatter than you'd like to be. You might say that these are redundant because you need to lose weight. That means you're fatter than you'd like to be. So why do I need to say this? So maybe I can just say one of them. If you feel you need to lose weight. If you think you're fatter than you'd like to be. If you're fatter than you want to be, you don't even have to have think there. If you're fatter than you want to be. If you're too fat, that's even easier. There are so many different ways to say it. If you think you're too fat, I have some suggestions for you. The point here is this and this. We don't need to have both of them. Usually. You could if you have a specific reason for it, but in this case, I think you don't need to. Now, the next one is about repetition, and we might say that the next one is okay. The item you ordered left the warehouse. It should arrive by the 16th. Any issues there? Well, not really. You could say the item you ordered left the warehouse and should arrive by the 16th, or you could say the item that you ordered will arrive by the 16th. And we don't even need to say the warehouse, because if it's going to arrive by the 16th, What do I care if it left the warehouse or not? That's not an issue. But a bigger issue would be if we say the item you ordered left the warehouse, the item should arrive by the 16th. This is a common problem where we say the main noun or some noun that we're talking about. Too many times. That is the purpose of pronouns. So we use it to replace the item if we know what we're talking about. Of course we use HESI and us, we use the, we use this wherever we can as long as it's clear which thing we're talking about. Let's replace nouns with pronouns wherever we can. Now, if there's some confusion and we've talked about several different things, then maybe we have to say it again, only when it's not clear which noun we're talking about. Do we have to say it again unless we know exactly why we're doing it. So you might then have the question, well, could this be it about the warehouse? Know, how do I know? Because warehouses don't arrive, warehouses don't move. You can't put a warehouse on a truck. So it has to be about the item because it would be crazy to say that it is about the warehouse. Now, another great way to avoid repetition and redundancy is to use relative clauses. Don't worry about the name. This is where we use something like WHO? That. And which as a way to add information to some thing or a person that we're talking about or whatever. And that allows us to add that information without needing to write a whole sentence, another sentence to add it. You don't have to write a whole sentence if it's a very simple thing, especially maybe a very good idea to use a relative clause. So a few examples of this. The house that I grew up in is a few blocks from here. Now this one is unique compared to these two. Notice that these have commas here. There's no comma here. We use that we use who if we're talking about a person. We can also use things like where we can use when e.g. but this type we use when it's necessary, we need it. And if we don't have it, the sentence doesn't make sense. It identifies the house, it identifies the person. For the other type. It's just bonus information. And if we remove it, that's fine. We at least know what we're talking about. If I take this part out, I grew up in, then I'm not sure which house you're talking about. Just reading this sentence by itself. The house is a few blocks from here. Which house? What else? What else are you talking about? So it might not make sense, but when we add that I grew up in, Okay. That adds information to house. And if this is a person, especially a person who we're not naming and we're using this to identify them or say more about them, then it's also perfect. E.g. the salesperson who gave me a great deal yesterday, just walked by me on the street. So what's the original sentence? The salesperson just walked by me on the street. Well, what's salesperson does salesperson I need something more to identify it. So I say the salesperson who who gave me a great deal yesterday on the phone, e.g. how would I know that they walked by me if I was talking to them on the phone anyway, it's just an example. Now, these two are also really useful for avoiding redundancy. My good friend who you met yesterday, just quit her job. We're adding this piece, this bit of information to my good friend. We use h2 because it's a person, right? We use h2 because it's a person. Notice we have the commas here. That means we can take it out, remove the whole thing. It's just bonus bonus information and that would leave it as my good friend, Just quit her job. Now you could still say which good friend. But this without, this part can work by itself. This is useful in avoiding redundancy and repetition because we might have two sentences about the same thing. And maybe we can use the relative clause, one of these three as a way to make it, make more sense. Be a little shorter, maybe a little simpler. And avoid saying something twice or repeating an exact word twice when we don't need to. What about this one? We remembered we had left it at the bar which was closed. So if we take this out which was closed, we remembered we had left it at the bar. That is complete by itself. Now we might have another sentence saying something like the bar that night was closed. Why do we need to say a whole other sentence? Why do we have to do that? It's just a little bit of information, especially if it's a simple thing. Can you use one of these two, combine it into another sentence that can be very, very powerful, which was closed, oh, what's closed? The bar I'm using which because it's now this is bonus information. It doesn't have to be here in order for the sentence to make sense. But it does help because if I know that the bar is closed, then maybe the whole story suddenly makes more sense. Now it tells me more and I don't have to ask, why didn't you just go back to the barn and get it? If you have already said which was closed, I don't need to ask that question. These relative clauses are very powerful. So let's just quickly review before we go on to our so-so example. The first thing we can do to avoid redundancy is if you've set it, don't say it again. If you've set it, don't say it again. Oh, I just said it twice. Oops. Second, we can use pronouns. So long as it's clear which thing we're talking about, user word to replace it so that we don't need to say it again. Words like this. That it, he, she, and so on use pronouns. It's a great way to avoid repeating yourself. And finally, use relative clauses. Sometimes we write a whole sentence and there's very little information in the sentence. We've only added a detail, but we need a whole sentence to say it. Well, if we've already said that thing, we've already mentioned it, maybe we can add that little piece of information, that little detail to that sentence. Using a relative clause. Not always, but often, you can, and it's a great way to help you avoid these two. So those are the three main ideas that I'd like you to keep in mind. Let's now look at our example. 10. Full Example of Redundant Writing: Now let's take a look at an example that has some redundancy issues in it and also some repetition issues, maybe some other things as well. I'd like you to really try to find those as we read through it. And then I want you to try to write your own variation. Write your own variation without these issues. That doesn't mean that you have to try to make exactly the same sentence. Keep the meaning, the general meaning at least as close as you can, and then say it a different way. How can it be more clear? Maybe use a relative clause. Maybe it needs more pronouns. Maybe you have to just delete something and start over. That's all okay. Trying to get you to think in a playful way, to start playing with language, to start playing with your writing so that you can, so that you can improve faster. So let's read through it. I've got my trusty red pen because I'm a teacher, got to have a red pen and see what we can find. Many people choose to avoid meat because of weight problems. Anything here, it's a redundancy. Well, it depends on how you see it. Look at this, choose to avoid here. Not to say that it's wrong, but if we avoid something, don't we also choose it? Generally, avoiding something is a choice. So maybe we don't need that at all. And would it sound better if we said, many people avoid meat? I certainly think so. I think that would be much more clear because of weight problems. I think it's a little strange because it's a bit vague. I can assume what weight problems are, I can guess. But maybe we can just say exactly what kind of weight problem it is. It's not a big, not a big issue. Many women or men would look in the mirror and see themselves fatter and uglier than they are. So they choose to go on a diet. So grammatically, this seems okay, but there are some odd things here. Women or men. Well, if it's women or men, than wouldn't it be simpler to just say many people? Why do we have to say women or men? Because men and women are people. So we could simplify that, right? Maybe, maybe would look in the mirror and see themselves fatter and uglier than they are. Now, this is a little confusing. What does it mean to be a certain way according to who? It might be a little confusing because we're making a statement about how they are. And we're not really saying according to WHO? According to me, well, we know they are not as attractive as they actually are. But what does that mean? Actually, who says how attractive or good-looking or fat or handsome or beautiful? They actually are. I find it a little bit confusing. And fatter and uglier. We talking about ugliness, are we talking about obesity? We're talking about being fat. Why do we have this here? This ugly thing may just cause confusion, may just be a distraction. Wait a second. Now, now, meat causes you to be ugly. Not only fat, I'm not even saying meat causes you to be fat. We're just looking at an example here. So I'm not, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a dietitians. I can't say, I don't know. And see themselves fatter than they are. I could live with that a little bit better because fat would be maybe how wide, how wide the person looks or their weight. It's easier to measure. I think it's kind of vague. If something raises a lot of questions in the mind of your reader, wait a second. Ugly, according to who exactly? Wait a second. We're talking about wait, are we talking about ugliness? Hold on a second. If they pause and think a lot about what you might mean, and it's not even your main point that may be something to get rid of to completely remove or at least say in a different way. And also fatter weight problems. We've already talked about weight problems. Do we really need to say fatter here? Well, maybe it depends on how we say it, but let's just, let's just notice that we have been a little bit redundant there. Okay? They choose to go on a diet. Here we have, again choose and we've used perhaps choose before if we're going to use it up there. So we have to be aware of that might be a little bit of repetition. Repetition there. Those diets don't always work. Oh, here we have diet this close to diets. Diets, diet. Two diets. We need to pay attention to that. But sometimes they do work. Oh my goodness. They don't always work. They don't always work, but sometimes they do work. This is very repetitive. Don't work, do work. Why do we have to say both of those? There must be a simpler way so that we can just say it one time and stop. Many also think that meat and other goods that contain protein would make people gain weight. Which is not true. Okay, now first I have an issue with this which, and that it's the beginning of a new sentence. Okay, so that's something just to underline. I'm just marking things here. Alright, now we have this again. Gain weight, weight problems. Fatter. Do we need to say this idea? Basically three times. Two, we have two. Can we say it twice? Can we say at once, how can we simplify it? And now we might be getting to a point of needing to just start over for when you make a variation of this and make it better. Maybe instead of just fixing these sentences, we just begin again and try to make it more clear using some of the things we've talked about earlier. We have a lot of issues here. It's not about being grammatically correct. That's not the main issue here. The main issue is about how often we're repeating ideas and specific words, saying them very close together like work and diet. Now of course we have meet twice, but maybe saying meets twice is okay, let's not say that we can never repeat words ever. Let's just say that we should, if we do it, know why we do it and do it consciously, do it by choice. We know why, we know why we're doing it. The last thing to point out about this one is and other goods that contain protein. First of all, I think this sounds very robotic. This is a description that you would read on a medicine bottle or something like that. It just sounds a little bit robotic and strange, not very conversational. That's not always a big problem. But again, what are we talking about? Are we talking about meat? Or are we talking about meat and other things that contain protein? Almost everything contains protein. Eggs, seaweed, almonds, tons of stuff. Everything contains protein. So this is a little confusing. Now if I'm reading this as a reader, I don't know what the topic is anymore. What is this about? Is this about people's body image? Is it about how healthy protein is in general? Is it about how healthy or unhealthy meat may be? Is it about being a vegetarian? I don't know. I'm not quite sure. So I would have to continue reading and hopefully finally, figure it out. So I would say this is not very good. It's not very clear, it's not very simple. Certainly more complicated than it needs to be. A lot of repetition, a lot of redundancy. So like last time, what I'd like you to do is think about this and then do a variation. This is something that I want you to be doing throughout the course. This is not a course where I just tell you a bunch of things and you listen and that's it. I want you to start using these ideas that we go through in this course, especially in this beginning part, where we're talking about the fundamentals of writing, I want you to get into the habit of using them with your own writing and using them with the so, so examples that we look at. It's not enough just to know something, to hear me make a point or explain something and say, Oh, yes, I understand. Okay. It's not enough. That's okay. But you have to take that and apply it so that you can build good writing habits. So that these things that we're talking about in this course, we'll just be part of your writing. Naturally. You don't have to think about them. It's very important. So take this, read it a couple of times. Think about what it might be. There's no right answer or wrong answer exactly. There are 1,000 different possible variations of this. Try to get the main idea in your own head and then just do a variation. If you want to try to variations or three variations, That's fine. That's great, Awesome. And make sure at least it's more clear than this one. Makes sure at least that it is avoiding redundancy and repetition and tried to use a few of the things that we talked about earlier, like relative clauses. Next, we're going to look at an example, a variation of this, which is at least better. 11. Fixing Redudant Writing: So now let's go over a variation of the example we just looked at and see if it's better if it's more clear, if it avoids repetition, if it avoids redundancy, let's take a look. And again, I want to just make it very clear that this is not the answer. There are many answers. These are just variations. There's no single answer. All we're trying to do is improve our writing by making it more clear using the fundamentals that we learned, the fundamentals of writing. So let's take a look at this and see if it's better. Many people. Okay, so we're not saying men or women. That was a little awkward. Avoid meat. Do we need to say eating meat? No, because meat is what we eat. We don't roll around in meat or usually do anything else with meat. So we probably mean eating. We can assume it. Obvious things can be assumed. We assume we're talking about eating to lose weight. This is a very clear goal. This is a clear goal. So we know what this is about. At least we're not confused about the purpose of this, either for health reasons or because they aren't satisfied with what they see in the mirror. Okay, now we have they hear and we have a j here. Is that wrong? Is that bad? I don t think it's I don't think it's bad because we're using it to replace people. So we're using the pronoun they. And if we want to make a slightly longer sentence here, like this first one is using they as a pronoun can help us remember that we're still talking about this. Here. Our main subject, people or many people. So I think it's okay. Also here we don't have any confusion about the reasons for this goal. The goal very clear. Lose weight. Why? Because people want to be more healthy. Health reasons. Very clear, or because they aren't satisfied with what they see in the mirror. Now the last example talked about being fat and being ugly. And that added some confusion because it makes us feel like we don't know what this is about exactly. Now it should be more clear subjectively in their own inner feelings. They just don't feel happy. Now, maybe that's partially because they don't like how they look. But it's suggested it's because they are heavier than they want to be, or they are fatter than they want to be in their own opinion. So it's just how they feel. We're making it clear here that it is subjective. Subjective. And that helps us to avoid confusion. These no meat diets only work in some cases. And it's worth mentioning that cutting out protein, which the body needs is not an effective way to slim down. Could we have taken this part and made it its own sentence? Yes, of course, we could have said, the body, of course, needs protein in order to function properly. We could have said that, but it is really just a tiny piece of information which the body needs. So why not just add it to a word that we're talking about, which is protein. We want to mention protein, then we don't have to make a new sentence. Making a new sentence is just unnecessary length. So this may be the perfect place to use our relative clause. Perfect opportunity. That doesn't mean that we can never make little sentences by themselves. Sometimes, often for the sake of syntax, we want to have a nice little sentence that says one thing and that can be great. I'm not saying never do it, but no, when it's not necessary, when it wouldn't really add anything useful to have another sentence, just to say one little thing. Now, this part, and it's worth mentioning that cutting out protein, which the body needs is not an effective way to slim down. This is a variation. We're saying something a different way. Instead of saying lose weight, we don't want to repeat lose weight, right? We want to avoid using the same phrase or words too many times. So we say slimmed down instead of lose weight. And this helps us avoid one of the issues that we had before, before it was confusing. Are we talking about protein now? All food with protein? We talking about meat and the effect of meat. We know we're talking about meat. And we want to mention, hey, by the way, meat does have protein. When we think of meat, we think of protein. It's worth mentioning. I just want to say it by the way, cutting out protein, which is another way to say in this case, meet the suggestion here is cutting out meat. We say cutting out protein. But the suggestion is cutting out meat, which the body needs is not an effective way to lose weight. So we're able to just add it as extra information without making it confusing or making people wonder, What is this about exactly? I'm not quite sure. At least now, it's a lot more clear and we've been able to avoid a lot of redundancy and repetition. So good luck with your variations if you're not quite happy with yours, keep working at it. Make two versions, three versions for versions, it's play. There isn't only one answer. Take this example, see if you can say it in a different way. Maybe take a few of the ideas from this one and put it in a variation that you've done, the more playful you are, the more you practice, the more clear your writing is going to get. If you have any questions, let me know and I will see you in the next lesson. 12. Why Simplicity Matters: Remember, we talked about earlier that the key to clarity in writing is simplicity. Now I want to talk more about that and I want to show you a few more examples. One, that you'll really get it. And two, so that you can see how it's done by the people who are considered best at it. We're going to look at some examples, a very clear, very simple writing. But first, let's just explore this idea. Think about it. If you try to write something that's kind of complicated or uses a lot of big words or a phrase you're not sure about. What are the chances that you're going to be very clear? Lower. What are the chances that what you write will have a mistake higher? So there's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping your writing very simple. And that could mean using a lot of basic vocabulary and phrases. It could also mean using simple sentences. Now that doesn't mean the same sentence all the time. That's bad syntax. But simple sentences, shorter sentences, That's great. Don't be afraid of short sentences to be correct and to keep things simple. Simple incorrect is better than to try to do something in a complex way that's unclear, that is especially wrong. Now if you're really good and you're absolutely sure and you have this beautiful thing that you want to do, this very long complex sentence. Okay, great. Sometimes use that. But if you're writing an email, you have to be very sure that that's correct. And if you're not very sure, keep it simple and you have a higher chance of being correct. And if it's correct, people are going to understand what you're talking about. The point of using languages, communication. And they're going to say, this person is careful. This person has a clear mind. This person knows what they want to say. Now for that reason, generally, I recommend that when you read, you read nonfiction, because non-fiction is written to be understood. Besides a few things like philosophy, but general nonfiction. The purpose of the author, the intention of the author is to express some ideas. So they don't want the language to get in the way of their meaning. Here's their meaning. This is what they mean to say. The author wants to express a certain meaning. And so if they use a very complex style, then what happens often that would lead to misunderstandings. So it's sort of like here's the meaning and it's expressed in a complex way. And people understand little pieces of this but not the whole thing. Or say it simply, ah, very simple, I understand that. Clear. Easy to get. So non-fiction is a great way to learn that simple style. And you can pick up some non-fiction books based on topics you're interested in. Now, that doesn't mean that all fiction is not so clear. Often fiction, even something like Harry Potter is going to be written to give you a picture in your head, to give you certain feelings or emotions. And not just to express some meaning or some idea that I want you to understand. It's more like a painting. So often it's a little harder to understand, more complex. Now that's, that's fine for authors. That's, that's okay. But in this course we're talking about how to write well, how to write clearly. So the author who writes a novel will write an email in a very different style. When they write an email to someone that they know for work or whatever, maybe their publisher, they are going to use this way of writing, not this way because we don't want to be misunderstood. Now, an example of an author who wrote fiction in a very simple way is Hemingway. So Hemingway's style tended to be really simple and we're actually going to look at a couple of examples so that you can see what simple looks like and why it's clear. If you wanna read Hemingway book that's written in this simple style, it's kinda famous for being really simple and a short book, The Old Man and the c. This is a classic novel about an old man on the sea who catches a huge fish. Well, I shouldn't say that because that might spoil something. It's a good book. It's very interesting. It's got a great style. And besides reading nonfiction, you can get a lot of inspiration about simple, clear writing from a book like this. Now before we look at the examples, what exactly did Hemingway do? What was his style? How did he keep his writing simple and clear? Well, one thing you might notice is that he tends to reduce adverbs. Now, often adverbs and in LY like slowly. But certainly not only e.g. if someone says run back, then back counts as an adverb for run. But let's look at how we could replace an LY and a verb with another verb. Another verb that includes the meaning of the verb. And LY, e.g. if someone says run quickly, there's nothing wrong with that with saying run quickly, It's not bad. But often to simplify things, to make things even more clear, to make them, I really like to use the word pop, which means they stick out in your mind, makes it very clear. To make our descriptions pop. We might replace quickly and run with a single verb that includes the meaning of run quickly. What would that be? Can you think of one? How about rushed? So instead of she ran quickly into the room. She rushed into the room using one verb, which includes that somehow, because it's simpler, gives you a clearer image of what's happening. And it is simpler because it's shorter. So that doesn't mean you always have to do it. But it's often a good idea if you can replace, especially in LY adverb and a verb with another more specific verb, it can make your writing more clear by making it simpler and making it feel more active, making it feel more alive. And the other thing that you often find in Hemingway's work is, as I mentioned, the power of the short sentence. The power of the short sentence. What does that mean? Now, there are long sentences in Hemingway's work, of course. But you often come across these short sentences, maybe between two longer sentences, or maybe a couple of short sentences in a row. And what that does is give your writing a sense of impact. Of impact. It's kind of refreshing like an ice cold glass of lemonade on a hot day. And it's hard to misunderstand a really clear, simple short sentence. So it's a great way to have impact. It's great for syntax and it helps to avoid misunderstandings if you're trying to be very clear. So let's look at the examples. 13. Examples of Simple Writing: So here we go. The first one and bed. He thought bed is my friend. Just bed. He thought bed will be a great thing. It is easy when you're beaten. He thought, I never knew how easy it was. Now, this is a great example of really impactful writing. Very short sentences, very simple and yet powerful in a way. By powerful, I mean, when you read this, you really can't misunderstand it. It creates a very clear thought or image in your head. It accomplishes its task. So I'm not saying that you always have to write like this. Of course not. There are many other ways to write these ideas. And you could do this in a much more complicated way with more adjectives and adverbs. And it would still be good, but it would give a different impression. I want you to take this way of doing it and add it to your tool belt. It's one of your tools. It's okay to do this is what I am saying. This is a celebrated author who's writing in this very simple style. So why shouldn't you do it? Or at least know how to do it so that when you need to be very clear, you can be. And when you want to use more, we call it flowery. We say flowery. When you want to use more flowery language, you can. And both are tools in your tool belt that you can use when you need them. Right. Let's look at the next one during the night. To porpoises is a kind of whale. Purposes of whale to porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female. This is a simple description of what these two whales are doing. This old man is sitting in this boat and he hears the two whales and the sounds that they make. So this is, I think, a very interesting description, rolling and blowing. I really like how vivid these two verbs are. Rolling gives us a feeling of play. And he could've said playing casually or something like that in the water. That would have been longer. Maybe it's okay. This though is extremely vivid and it's one word. And we're allowed to use our imaginations to sort of picture in our minds what rolling might be in the water. Perfect word. So sometimes finding that perfect verb can really make your writing more clear. Now, notice that these are not all short sentences, like the one above. During the night to porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. So is that okay to have longer sentences? Of course. Who am I to tell Ernest Hemingway what he shouldn't shoot it to? He's the, he's the genius, not me. But you have to have a purpose and an intention behind each thing. I'm, maybe I could guess, going to say it this way. If I'm Ernest Hemingway, which I'm not during the night to porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing because these two things are connected together, right? I'm connecting my listening in the boat to their action. And maybe if I separate them into two separate sentences, it feels disconnected. And I want these things to feel combined so I choose a longer sentence. This is not a complicated sentence at all though it's still a simple sentence, is just a little bit longer. And he could hear them. Just a way to connect another thing you can always use and to connect. Another thing. I think the point here though, is you have to know why you're doing it. You have to have an intention. You, when you're writing or making creative decisions to get your thoughts out there in a way that other people will understand in a certain way. And these decisions that you make have a direct impact on how people understand what you've created. So making a decision like I'm going to use a few short sentences, or I'm going to link these two actions together. Making these decisions should be something that you think about and you do with intention. When you think to yourself, I'm going to do this because that makes you ask yourself questions like, well, if I did it the other way, how would that feel when people understand me a little differently? What would that do? Well, let me try it. Let me play with it. So play, as I've mentioned many times already, is really important because when you play with a few different variations, you can see which one feels more like what you're thinking and what you're feeling, then it's not the language that's telling you what to do. You are the artist, you are the painter. And the languages, one of the tools that you have, how you choose to use it, like a painter, choosing a brush to express yourself. So I want you to get out of this. Way of thinking of is it right? Is it wrong? No. No. Does it express what you want to say? And why did you do that? Do you know why you did that? If you're missing some of the tools, then you don't even know what you're doing exactly, and that's not good. So you have to know all the tools. Then you decide you're the boss, you are the creator. Okay, let's look at the last example. They are good. He said they play and make jokes and love one another. They are our brothers, like the flying fish. Now, you might look at this and say, Okay, wait a second. They play and make jokes and love one another. If I remember what I learned in middle school, you're supposed to do a list with commas and only use one end at the end. 12.3, right? Maybe. But that would be you saying, oh, I can't make the decision because of this. I have to I must know no, as long as it's grammatically correct, you should give yourself permission to play with things like this. So why would he say they play and make jokes and love one another? Well, we can only guess, but maybe giving it a list feeling. It gives it this impression of being mechanical. And maybe that's not what we want. Maybe Hemingway was thinking here. I want it to feel like an activity more like that. And so I want to use and, and twice like this because to me, that feels more active, that feels more lively and it doesn't feel like this very strict list 123. That would be things I order at the supermarket and buy this, this, and this. Maybe that feels a little odd for something like this when we're trying to express something like this. So I hope that these examples can give you some insight. But of course, I would encourage you to continue exploring, check out the book, The Old Man and the Sea. I recommend picking that up and reading it. It's a really interesting story. It takes maybe two days to read. It's not a, not a very long book. And continue exploring. Pay attention to syntax when you're reading e.g. nonfiction, which is probably what you should read most of. Pay attention to how ideas are expressed and add those things that you pick up, those insights, those inspirations to your tool belt or to your set of brushes, whichever analogy works for you. And use those, play with those, and then ask a friend for feedback, show it to somebody. What do you think about this? Give me some feedback. That's a process of improving. It's a process of becoming a better writer. So what I'd like you to do to practice this is use each of these as a kind of template. You don't have to follow it exactly very strictly, but e.g. for this one, use all short sentences, play with that. Don't write about friends and beds maybe right, about something completely different. Find a topic in your mind or something that you want to describe a thought that you have or had today. And then write it in this style. Then try to describe something in this style. Maybe don't describe porpoises, described something that you saw today, something interesting that you experienced recently. And use this as a kind of guideline. Use it for inspiration. Follow the same basic structure and see if you can say what you want to say in the same way. That's the best way to really learn a new style. Then maybe for this one, you could try the end thing. Try that, maybe make it about an activity like this one is three different things that could be interesting. Play around with it. Do three different examples, share those. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll see you in the next lesson. 14. How Adjectives Can Make Writing Your Writing More Vivid: In this lesson, we're going to talk about using adjectives. Using adjectives to make our writing more colorful, more vivid, more vivid adjectives. And the way that we choose to use them allow us to create the picture that we want the other person to have in their minds. That's how we do it. It's one of the most important ways, at least. So just as a simple example, if someone writes a hat, That's fine, does nothing wrong with that. But then you can imagine any kind of hat that you like. You might imagine a small hat. You might imagine a plaid hat. You might imagine a certain style of hat, like a golf hat or whatever. So if instead of just saying a hat, I say a cowboy hat. A cowboy hat, that's a W there. Then you're getting a certain picture that I want you to have. But am I limited to only one? No. You might be thinking, by the way, hey, wait a second, cowboy, that's a noun. Nouns become adjectives when they're put in front of other nouns. So a noun can move over to one side, e.g. a cowboy hat, a cowboy hat store. So now cowboy hat are like adjectives for store. That's what kind of store it is. Okay. So we could say a cowboy hat, we could say a green cowboy hat. We can say a leather cowboy hat. We can talk about the material. We could talk about the style. We could say An old and old worn, an old worn green cowboy hat. If we want to, we can add adjectives. And I want you to get used to thinking carefully about the adjective that you want to use or the adjectives that you want to use to describe your nouns. Because that really is where it gets most creative in a lot of ways. Now, should we use one? Should we use two? Can use one. Sometimes you can use to, you're going to use three. You can use for. It's okay. Don't be afraid to use more than one adjective. Now if it gets really crazy and you're using eight additives, That's a little extreme. That's a little crazy. But for adjectives is totally fine if it helps you to create that image. Now, what using more than one adjective also allows you to do is to save space. So if I want to say all these things about a, about a coffee shop, that it's quiet, that it's little, that it's rustic. I don't need to make a sentence for each one of those. I just take those things as adjectives and put them in front of my main noun, 123. And we can count this one as four, and then shop is our main noun. Sometimes we can say that coffee shop is our main noun. Either way is okay. So in this lesson we're going to be talking about this a little bit and also exploring a few other key ideas with adjectives about how we use adjectives. Let's start with this multiple adjectives in front of our noun. So let's dig into this one a little bit. This one, we'll call our main noun, our main noun. And let's call these for our, our adjectives. Now why did I choose these? Well, this is what I'm looking at or this is what I visited yesterday. It's quiet. It's small, so little. It has a rustic feeling. So if I just use adjectives of size, I'm not really capturing it. I feel that it has this old-fashioned style. I could use old fashion. Maybe that's rustic. Rustic is the perfect word. And then what kind of shop is it? Is it a clothing shop, hat shop nodes, a coffee shop? Okay, so I'm using a noun as an adjective. Then altogether these will create hopefully a really clear, interesting image that the other person can have in their mind when I write this, or even in fact, when I say this, if I say it, we're talking about writing. So let's focus on that. What if I say, we found a rustic little quiet coffee shop? It doesn't sound right. So let's talk about order of adjectives. Now this is not always totally strict, but it's generally something like this. Opinion. Size, age, shape, color, origin. This one goes up like this material purpose. Now as a general guideline, this works pretty well. Some things, though, can be a bit fuzzy. E.g. rustic is rustic the age, because remember, rustic is kind of like old or old fashion or as rustic my opinion about it. Well, if it's my opinion about it than it should be earlier and it should be before little. But if it's the age than maybe it should be after, To me, it sounds better to put it after little. So that's kind of counting it as H. So there is some flexibility here, but let's see if this works. Quiet. My opinion, little size, rustic, let's call that age and coffee, which is purpose. So quiet little rustic coffee shop. Okay. Could we say quiet rustic little coffee shop? That would be okay. I think there's that fuzziness and you can play with that a little bit depending on what you consider this adjective to be. So it's not this totally strict, it must be always like this thing. But if I took an origin adjective like Turkish, and I put it in front of something like opinion. And I said a Turkish quiet little rustic coffee shops. Suddenly, this sounds quite odd. So that one would go before purpose, that would go right here and it should sound right. We found a quiet little rustic Turkish coffee shop. And that sounds right to me. So that would work pretty well. This is something that you really have to get the feel for because this is just a general guideline. And I would encourage you, as you're reading, to look at the adjectives in front of main nouns and look at the order, see how they're used. That will allow you to get this field. I know that's not a great word to use to get a feeling for something that's sounds so unclear. But the process of becoming a better writer isn't always this very clear step-by-step process. It is about getting a feel for it. So start here and pay attention. Turn on your, I call it your radar. Turn on your adjective order radar. And when you're writing, try to use a few, a few adjectives, three, maybe four adjectives in front of your main noun, especially if it's the beginning of a description. Then go back to this and see if it fits. Or if you need to move something around a little bit because maybe there's a word that would fit into this category or this category, and that's still sounds. Okay. And in your own writing, don't be afraid to use more than one adjective. Try especially if it's the beginning of a description, to use 234 adjectives. Use this as a starting point. Play around with it and see what sounds natural, see what feels natural. Now if you always add three or four adjectives in front of every single noun, it's going to be very hard to read your writing. It's going to be very tiring, so you don't want to overuse this. It's great to use adjectives. It's great to choose the best adjective and think about that carefully. However, you have to know when maybe you don't need an adjective, or maybe you just need one adjective, maybe two adjectives. So let's then look at this one with comfortable green plush chairs. I'm using a little more than I normally would here to just show you how this works. But let's look at this one comfortable. Is that my opinion? Yes, it is. How about green? Well, obviously that's color and how about plush? That's material. So this follows the adjective order in front of chairs a few blocks from our hotel. Now I'm using hotel without any adjectives. Why? Well, maybe I don't care if you have a picture of the hotel because I'm talking about the coffee shop. So always think about what you're actually trying to create. This is a field process. And so there isn't a clean rule to say. You must use an adjective here and no adjective there and four there. There's no clear rule for that. But what's your purpose? What is your intention? You see yourself as a painter. I'm painting a picture. What are you painting a picture of? I'm painting a picture of this place, this coffee shop. Okay? So that's where you want to focus your adjectives. But if I'm trying to paint a picture of this place and not the hotel, then I don't need to use adjectives in front of hotel. Is anything added really by saying, our beautiful hotel? Maybe, maybe I think that would be distracting. Because again, my purpose, my intention is to give you a picture of this place and not this place. I don't really care how you feel about that because maybe, maybe I described this place in another sentence. So choose something, choose a place and practice describing it. Follow this basic structure as a starting point. But then look for other kinds of sentences and how they use more than one adjective and try out those as well. Use them as a kind of template and you can take that template and play with it, putting in your own words, your own meaning, and then you know how to do that so that when you need it, you can use it in your writing. Now, let's look at the use of really and how we can choose very specific, very clear adjectives to replace, especially really, and maybe vary as well. 15. Alternatives to Very and Really: We use the word really and the word vary to add strength to an adjective. If I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty. If I'm very thirsty, that's more. Okay. You know that, right? That's okay. So I'm not telling you, don't use that. What I am telling you is, often you can replace a really adjective or a very adjective with another adjective. That includes the meaning of very adjective or really adjective. A few examples. Really hungry, starving, really old, maybe vintage. Or maybe if it's about history, maybe that would be something like ancient. Or if it's something that's not cool anymore dated. There are a lot of different words that you could choose depending on what you mean. Very fun, very fun. Oh, how was the trip? Very fun, exhilarating, exciting, maybe amazing. Depending on if you want to focus on the fun part or the exciting part. Very fun could be exhilarating, but maybe you feel that's too big a word, not the type of person who likes to use big words. I certainly wouldn't use only words like that. If I want to say exciting, I'll say exciting. If I want to really give it some interesting twist, I'll say maybe exhilarating. That was an exhilarating ride. That's a very colorful adjective. Don't necessarily use every interesting adjective all the time. You have to think about which one is best. And you can still use these, of course, the really in the very, There's nothing wrong with it. But add to your tool belt or add to your painting, set. This ability to replace these with other words that are more specific. Because if you do that, then you have more variety in your writing. And that generally is going to make it more interesting. If you always say, really, really, really, really, really, really, really. People start to think, Oh, don't you know any other words right now? How do you find these? What if you don't know all of these words? What if you want to learn new words? Well, you know the basic word, hungry, okay? Then look in a thesaurus for words that have a similar meaning. A thesaurus. A thesaurus is a kind of dictionary that shows you words that have the same or similar meaning. And you can explore other words that you might use to make your writing more colorful. But I want to mention something very important here. You have to be careful. If you don't really understand the adjective, it might confuse others. You have to make sure you understand it. Now, there are many out there, many available. I often use the free dictionary because I like how it's arranged. I like the tools that it has to allow me to explore words. And very importantly, every word that I look up, we'll have a lot of examples sentences. That means that I can see how this word is used in a sentence. So I look up the word old in a thesaurus and I find vintage. Maybe that's an interesting one. I want to learn more about it. How do I actually use it? When should it be used and when shouldn't it be used? Because it's certainly not the same as ancient. It's not the same as dated. These are different. So which one captures my meaning? Which one captures what I want to say? And how do I know if it does, if it's a new word? Read the examples, read the example sentences. That's very important. It can help you get a feel for how it's used in the language. When you look up words in a thesaurus, it's just important to remember that while these two words that we're talking about, let's say old and let's call this, let's do, well, let's just say ancient. While they have the same meaning here, they also have their own individual usage. This one is used in a way that this one is not used and this one is used in a way that this one is not used. So there is an area of overlap here. And to get the feeling for this part, to get the feeling for this part, you really just have to explore. Once you feel like, I think I know how this word is used. I've seen the examples. I've practiced a few sentences, then maybe you can start using it yourself. But it's always a good idea, of course, to get feedback. So if you have a partner, a study buddy, writing partner, e.g. ask them to read what you wrote. Maybe they can give you some feedback to see if your adjectives seem natural. This is, of course, as I've mentioned many times, a process of play. A process of getting the feel, getting the feel for it, getting an intuition for which adjective sounds natural for what I want to say. And I promise you if you're using a big word and you're not quite sure how it's used. And you kind of force it into a sentence and a native English speaker reads it, they will be able to tell and it's going to feel a little uncomfortable. You just, you just force this one into the sentence. You're not quite sure about that word. So you don't want to just look up a bunch of synonyms and pick one randomly and put it in to replace one of these. That's not a good idea. Don't do that. Don't do that. You have to make sure you understand it. So it's a great excuse to learn more adjectives. So we've talked about how to use more than one adjective to add color to a description in front of a main noun. We've talked about the order of the adjectives and the general guideline that you can use when you're trying to figure out which order to put your adjectives in. Now we've talked about how to replace vary. And really, we've talked about how to use a thesaurus to learn more adjectives, to understand them. Now that we've talked about these things, Let's explore two examples. We're going to look at an example which is okay. And then we're going to look at a better example that uses adjectives in the way that we've been talking about. So let's explore our first example. 16. When Adjectives are Not Used Well: Okay, so let's look at an example and pay attention to how adjectives are used or not used. And I want you to start thinking about how we could use adjectives better than they are used here. And then I'm going to ask you to make your own variation as I have before. So let's, let's read through it and see if we can find any areas to improve. If you're visiting New York, I recommend going too. Greenwich Village, which is a really great place to hang out and listen to live music. There is a very large fountain in the middle. And on the northern side you can see Washington Square Arch. So do you notice anything here? Well, really great. It's not wrong, is it? But there might be something a little more specific that we could use there, even if it's a very common word. We also have very large. So now it's starting to feel a little boring. Very large, really great. So, so, right, and also look at some of our nouns here. Fountain, large fountain. Could we say a little more about the fountain? Could we paint a bit of a picture with the fountain? What about Washington Square Arch? Could we add something to that to make it a little bit more vivid or a little bit more colorful, more interesting. I think we probably could. So what are we going to do to improve this? Well, we're going to add more, more adjectives to the nouns that we want to describe. Maybe we don't need to add more to New York because we're not talking about New York. Remember? We're not talking about the hotel, we're talking about the coffee shop. What's the coffee shop here? Greenwich Village. We talking about New York. We're talking about a place in New York, so we may not need anything here. Let's add nothing there. But for this and also for the fountain, let's add more color, more adjectives. Good. Also, we're going to replace these really great and very large. I'm sure that you can come up with some adjectives. Sure you have a few in mind that you could put in place of those. So we're going to replace really. And very in this sentence, that doesn't mean you always have to, but we're going to do it here. What I'd like you to do before you look at our next example, the one that's better, I'd like you to try it. Do a variation of this, see if you can improve it by adding more adjectives and by replacing really in vary with more interesting adjectives that have the same basic meaning, which contain the really in the very inside of them. 17. Using Adjectives Well: How did it go? Making your own example? Are you starting to get the feeling for it? I hope so. I hope so. Now let's look at my variation. This is one of any number of possible variations. I'll say this 1,000 times in this course. There isn't only one answer. There are thousands of answers. All we're trying to do is make it better if you're visiting New York. Okay, so we haven't added anything there. We don't need to because people know what New York is and we're not describing New York. I recommend going to Greenwich Village, which is an amazing place to hang out and listen to live music. Okay, So should we add adjectives in front of Greenwich Village? We could, but we're doing that down here with another thing that has a specific name, the adjective, adjective. And then we say the name of this thing or this place. This is a specific name. So we would say the, and then we would have a couple of adjectives, maybe three adjectives. And then we would say Greenwich Village. For this one, we would have to choose because if we did that twice inside of one simple description, it would be a little tiring. So let's instead focus on the general feeling we have about this place. This is where before we said Really, we said it's a really great place to hang out. Well here we're saying which is an amazing place to hang out. So that's an easy thing to replace. Amazing is a pretty simple word. Most people know it. Say fantastic. We could say awesome, whatever, something like that place to hang out and listen to live music. So it's more of a description of the kind of things that you can do here rather than describing it exactly because we're going to go on to describe it by talking about what we can do there. And one famous thing that is inside of Greenwich Village, which is an amazing place to hang out and listen to live music. There is a gigantic circular fountain, gigantic, one circular to fountain in the middle. Two adjectives in front of fountain. Before we said, very large, very large, not very interesting. How about gigantic circular, much more vivid, much more clear in the middle. And on the northern side you can see the, this tells us that we're going to use a specific name like Greenwich Village in New York, Washington Square Arch, the iconic marble Washington Square Arch. Does this fit with our order of adjectives? Very interesting opinion. It's my opinion that it's iconic marble material. So yes, it does. That fits. So I think we could continue working with this to make it even better. We might change the structure a little bit. We could do more variations. Certainly this could be improved. But as a first variation compared to the previous one, it is, I think better. It gives me a clear picture of Washington Square Arch. Before we just said Washington Square Arch, we didn't say anything else. So it's at least better see if you can make another variation that's even more interesting than this one, try a few variations, play with adjectives. Look up similar words in a thesaurus. Make sure when you look up those words that you're reading the examples so that you can see how it's used so that when you use a new adjective, it doesn't sound forced. It doesn't sound awkward. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll see you in the next lesson. 18. Replacing Adverbs with Vivid Verbs: We talked earlier in the course a little bit about verbs and how to use them well. But this really using verbs well, deserves its own lesson. So that's what we're going to do in this lesson. We're going to talk about how to use verbs to make our writing more accurate, more vivid, and more clear. We're going to be focused on using strong verbs, which along with our knowledge of adjectives, allows us to write more clearly. Because we're reducing unneeded complexity. We're reducing words from the sentence that we just don't need. And it helps make our sentences have more impact, and it helps make that image in the reader's mind more clear. Now this first thing that we're going to look at you should be familiar with. So let's just review this. Here we have an adverb, adverb, adverb, adverb, adverb, these LY words. Now of course we can use them. They're great, but it can be very powerful to find a better verb, just like we talked about with adjectives, exploring, learning these strong verbs, these interesting verbs is just a matter of looking them up in a thesaurus, in a dictionary. But always make sure that you look at the examples so that you really understand it to make sure it is exactly what you want to say. So let's look at a few simple examples with these. Instead of saying spoke quietly, maybe we could say murmured, could be squeaked. A lot of different words would fit this spoke quietly. And that's the point. These are usually more accurate than the one that has the adverb. This one could be any kind of spoken quietly. It could be having them learn or it could be it could be. Squeaked would be, and murmured would be, and whispered would be. So those are different. And so it allows you to be more accurate and say exactly what you want to say, not just a general idea, not just a general impression. Requested, forcefully, demanded, maybe insisted. There are a lot of other words that would again be more accurate than saying requested forcefully, which by the way, sounds a little bit weird to me to request forcefully. It's a bit strange thought deeply to think deeply about something that could be pondered. If we're making a decision. Maybe ruminate if we're trying to really think about something in a very deep level, again, there are a lot of words that could fit that one also more accurately. Secretly watched. Most people would not say secretly watched, you could, but spied is probably a better word. Excitedly shouted or shouted excitedly, exclaimed. But that might be an excitement of enthusiasm. But what about if it's fear that maybe it would be yelled, screamed, all kinds of different words bellowed, and each of those has a connotation. So whether it's adjectives or verbs, the power of choosing more accurate words, more accurate verbs, more accurate adjectives, is in the connotation. Now this is the meaning that people get when they hear it, the feeling they might have related to the culture. How does it feel in someone says squeaked versus murmur, gives me two different feelings. This is beyond just the definition in the dictionary. Often the dictionary will give you the denotation and connotation is more of that feeling that we connect with words, that cultural sense that we have for certain words. And to get that, what should you do? Of course, the examples in the thesaurus or the dictionary, and of course, through reading because writers read. So if I want to say yelled, this could be excited because I'm angry. I could be yelling because I'm excited. I could be yelling because I'm trying to warn someone, Hey, look out. Maybe I'm yelling for any of those reasons. We have to know that get a feeling for that one. Exclaimed is similar, but probably more for excitement. Screamed is usually more often at least used for extreme excitement or perhaps extreme rage. Very, very angry. Someone screams at you and bellows, focusing on the loudness of it. So each of these has a connotation. And when you use these, well, when you know how to use these than the thing, the meaning that's opening up in your reader's mind, the image, the picture that description that's opening up in their mind is very close, or at least a lot closer to what you have in your mind. Let's call these then more generic. And again, there's nothing wrong with using them. But getting away from the generic and moving toward the more accurate or specific moving into connotation land in your writing is taking your writing from this level to this level and it gives you a new power, almost like a superpower of description. Now let's look at this idea in a little bit more detail. 19. Replacing General Verbs with Vivid Verbs: When we're choosing more accurate verbs instead of more generic verbs, were not only replacing a verb and an adverb like we, like we just talked about. We're also replacing very general words that could be understood in so many different ways with one that is more accurate, more specific. So it's not just for those adverbs, those LY adverbs. And I'll give you a perfect example here before we look at these examples, make, if I say I made something, how might you understand that I made this? What's your impression of that? What's the connotation? Well, you might take that many different ways. You could understand it in so many different ways. These very general verbs, like make are certainly useful. Great of course. But because they're so common, because they're so general, you might take it this way and that person understands it another way and she understands it a different way. Everybody understands it differently. So I'm not being very clear, am I? Right? So what can I do instead of make? Well, it depends on what I want to say. Maybe I could say develop, maybe I could say create. Maybe I could say craft. Maybe I could say manufacturer. Maybe I could say synthesized there. So many different other words I could use. Now, why would I use develop? Well, maybe this is a process where I'm working with others. Maybe it's kind of technical. Maybe there's a team involved. That's the feeling I get when I hear the word developed. It's a process of getting feedback and trying again and then communicating with other people on a team. This is the connotation, at least for me when I hear the word develop. So if that's the idea you have in your head and maybe that's a better word. Well, what about create? Well certainly this could be more artistic, but the connotation of this one for me would be someone has thought of a new idea. They decided to make something in a, in an artistic or creative way. And then they go through the process of making it by themselves. A person who is really creative, a person who is really intuitive, a person who has really intelligent. I can make this by myself. Now maybe it's art, but maybe it's a solution to a problem. I created a system that I think will work for us. I came up with it. It's my idea. It comes from me and I'm smart enough to come up with this idea that one might be good. What about craft? When I hear craft, I'm thinking of physical objects. Not only but often for physical objects, may be an artist who's building a sculpture, or maybe a writer who's so careful with each word that it's like what I'm writing is a sculpture is a work of art. This is my craft. I'm crafting this essay. It also suggests care and attention. Attention to detail. Okay? Why do I use Suggest? Because suggest really is about the connotation and I know it's easier to have a clear yes, no black and white. Is it right or is it wrong answer. But when it comes to writing, as we've talked about already and as we will continue to talk about, this process is not about right and wrong. It's about expressing your ideas and being understood as you want to be understood. That's what it's really about. So you have to accept the fuzziness except that it's not that clear that there isn't a correct answer all the time, most of the time, right? What about manufacturers? When I see this word, I immediately think of factory. I think of making a product. I think of a physical object usually, I think of an assembly line, something like that. So that's obviously a very different thing. But these all are more specific and more I think, clear. Then Make. Now let's look at how we can do this for full sentences. We carried everything home at once. We hold everything home at once. What's the difference? Well, carrying is a pretty general word and it could be understood in many different ways. Hauled feels to me like it's a burden, It's very heavy. There's a lot of stuff. And so it gives me more of a feeling of the difficulty of it because you can just carry an apple down the street. And I don't know if that's a lot, but if you say halt, I know it's a lot of stuff and it was very difficult. So my picture is a lot clearer. She moved into the kitchen. Moved is one of the most general verbs there is. How did she move? In what way did she move? I can picture it any way that I like. Is she riding a bicycle into the kitchen? I don't know. I have no idea. She slipped into the kitchen. Ah, this suggests maybe she's trying to be quiet or she went in for a short time, maybe she has to do something quickly in the kitchen and then leave. This one doesn't give me that feeling at all. I don't know if she's there for a long time. I don't know what she's going to do there. This one tells me something about maybe her intention. It tells me the way that she's doing it. So I think this one is much better if that's what we want to say. The vines went up, the wall, went go. This is an extremely general verb. How did the vines go up the wall? Well, I know what vines do. They kind of go like this over months or years up the wall, right. That's what they do. So I know that. But if I add crapped to it, then I get this slightly different feeling. In a slightly different feeling is more of this sort of thing that the vines are doing up the wall. Like they're being sneaky almost, right? They're slowly moving up the wall. That's a lot better. I bought an old car last week. Bought by you bought something? I don't know how you got it. I don't know if it was a process that you just go there and say, hey, give me that car, here's the money, and then leave. I don't know. I procured an old car, gives me a feeling of some difficulty. There's bargaining, it's a process. Many phone calls, maybe you've got lucky to get it because others were trying to get it. That's the sense I get there some difficulty involved. So that's a lot more clear. Alice was unable to say what happened. Alice was unable to divulge what happened. This one is really interesting because if I use say here, it doesn't tell me anything about Y. Maybe she couldn't say it because she was too nervous. Maybe she couldn't say it because she couldn't remember the right words. Maybe she couldn't say it because she was scared. I don't know. But if I say unable to divulge, it's not that you can't find the right words. It's that it is a secret. Someone has told her. Don't tell this to anybody. So she can't say it because of some thing that happened before, that is not allowing her to say it. She's not allowed to say, oh, okay. So I hope from these examples you can get a clearer picture of how to do this. Find the word you want to use. Make sure you understand it. Make sure it fits the meaning that you have, the thing that you want to express. And then see if you can replace some of these more general verbs that you're using. But to be clear, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't use general verbs like make, like, went, like, moved. Yeah, of course, you can use them. But if you only use them, you're really missing a huge opportunity. The opportunity to be very specific, to be very accurate, and to create a powerful picture. Now we're going to go on and talk about how we can use accurate verbs or strong verbs to replace stative, stative verbs to make our writing feel more active, more alive. 20. Making Use of Verbs for Clarity: Now let's extend what we've been talking about further to use stronger, more accurate, more specific verbs to replace be verbs. B is m, and so on. Let's look at the first example and then we'll talk about why we should do this or why we can do this. Your course is really beneficial to learn from anything wrong there. No, I benefited a lot from your course. Now, when I hear this one, I think that's better. That's more clear. But why exactly? Is there anything wrong with using is of course not. We use is all the time, so no, absolutely not. But why is this one more clear? Why is it more vivid? One, we're taking the main point or the main idea. We're only saying this because we're talking about it being beneficial and we're making it the action that connects to the subject. The first one has a kind of passive feeling. I'm really just describing the course in general. And I'm saying for anyone who takes it, I think this course is beneficial. So I'm using this adjective to describe the course, but I'm not really connecting myself to it. But if I want to say that same meaning and I want it to feel more active. I want to connect myself to the course. Like this thing happened to me. It's more of an action. It's directly connected to me than I do I or the subject and the verb right after that. And then it feels like now I'm connected to the verb. And here comes this course and it did a thing to me, sort of acting on me. It seems a lot more powerful, a lot more active, and I think a lot more interesting. But notice here that it's the same verb. So we don't have to always go into the dictionary or the Thesaurus and find some interesting verb. Not always, sometimes just taking an adjective and verb, reifying it, making it a verb is a great thing to do to replace an is if you feel like you're writing is a little weak, it's not strong enough, it's not clear enough, it's not active enough. This is a great way to improve it. Find a word that's in the sentence. And if you can make it a verb that connects to the subject. And the next one is kind of similar because we're using the same word in a different form. This is the verb form in the past tense. This is the adjective form, but the structure is a bit different. Now, look at the structure for these two. It was quite exhausting to drive the whole day. Driving the whole day exhausted us. Which of these fields more active? Which of these fields more vivid? I would certainly say this one instead of saying it was quite exhausting to, and then the activity at the end. Let's start with the activity. What are we talking about? What's the action that's happening? And I and G, We start with the activity, the ING. Then we say what that thing kind of a thing the activity did to us, sort of like this one we talked about the course. I benefited from the course. It's like the courses. I'm benefiting you. It's beating you with benefits for something like that. This one is kind of similar in that sense. We start with the action and this thing, this action, this activity is doing something to us. So we treat this as a noun, driving the whole day. We can treat this as a noun phrase and then exhausted us. It exhausted us. This thing, did this thing to us. So starting with an ING verb is a great way to do this, to replace this more passive sounding, less interesting. It was nothing wrong with it, but maybe not as interesting. Or you could just take this as better syntax. Maybe sometimes you use this way, but sometimes I want to make it really pop. I'm going to use this way, or I'm going to use this way. These are just options tools in your tool belt for better syntax. Now we're going to really focus on syntax more later in the course. So if you're wondering, how can I improve my syntax, don't worry. Want to just make this point clear about verbs. So next example, her talk was quite a lot better than mine. Now, we can replace it with an interesting word. So we can use the same word in a different form like we did for these two. Or we can find, like we talked about before, a great powerful verb, really accurate specific verb that makes it more clear. Instead of her talk was Quite a lot better than mine. Her talk obliterated mine. Again, the talk is doing something. Here comes the talk. Obliterate is like destroy. It was far better. So it gives me the impression of me being way, way down here and her talk being way, way up here. Not even close, much more active. So while this one and this one looked different, the structure is very similar. This thing we're treating as a noun phrase, and then this is the verb, and then this is the object of the verb, us. This is the thing that we're talking about, noun phrase, and then this is the verb, and then this is the possessive object. This is the object of the sentence. Her talk obliterated, destroyed mine. Now that doesn't actually mean that the talk is doing something to mind. But in the comparison, people would say, if it's one versus another, that one destroys that one. Meaning, I think it was much better or I think her talk was much better. But again, either of these are okay to use. Maybe that's just a good way to improve syntax. Or maybe you write more often like this, and you sometimes use this way to switch it up to have some more variety in your writing. Okay, the next one, Kathy is not a fan of cats. Cathy is not a fan of cats. Cathy doesn't like cats. I might say this if I want it to be soft, I don't wanna be too harsh to direct. Kathy hates cats. Boom, this one really pops. Now, this one depends on the feeling that you want to give to the person who's reading what you wrote. If I say this one, it feels like, oh yeah, he doesn't feel very strongly about cats, but she wouldn't get a cat herself. Kathy hates cats. She has a strong opinion about cats. It's Kathy versus cats. So it pops a bit more and that might stick out a little bit more in your reader's mind. They're going to really remember that about Kathy, whereas they might not remember this as well. But what's your goal? Do you want them to remember it or do you want to let them know that actually, Cathy's just not a huge fan of cats and that's okay too. I'm frustrated by the rules. I'm frustrated by the rules. The rules frustrate me. Again. We have the adjective and we have the verb. So notice what we're doing sometimes is just changing the form and then shuffling things around a little bit. And by doing that, we can get rid of this Be verb which we don't want to use too much. We don't want to overuse it because it's such a common verb. When we feel like we're using it too much, all my sentences feel boring, kind of the same. It is this, I am this. She was that boring to read, very tiring to read the same sentence, I need better syntax. What can I do? Maybe I could take this sentence here, get rid of the M, and then take the I and put it at the end, change it to me, and then talk about this because I'm focusing on the rules. I'm not the main focus really. The rules are the main focus. That's why I'm saying this. The rules frustrate me. Oh, very clear, very powerful and impactful. So it's helpful to always ask yourself the question when you're writing, what am I doing? Why am I saying this? Am I saying it this way? Because that's just how I say things. Or am I saying it this way because I have a reason for saying this and I want to leave people with a certain idea. I'm mentioning this because this course is really beneficial, because I took it. So I'm focusing on me in the course. Okay, I start with I benefited. I really want to focus on the rules. If I weren't talking about the rules and my feeling about the rules, that I wouldn't be saying this at all. So maybe we start with the rules because that's why I'm saying it. So maybe I should start with that and maybe I should use the verb form with me at the end to make it feel like the rules are attacking me. I'm being attacked by the rules all the time because that's how I feel. So play around with this. In addition to looking up interesting verbs, you can look up lists of strong verbs. You can explore similar words in a thesaurus in the same way that we did for adjectives to add to your pile of useful vocabulary to use when you need it. And you can play by taking sentences from something you're reading. Find sentences like this. With is, with, was with, were with B, with M. Find similar sentences like these in what you're reading and then try to do more active, more interesting variations of those with e.g. a. Verb that replaces an adjective, make it more interesting that way, try starting a sentence with an activity using an I-N-G verb to start the sentence. And then the verb of an adjective in the original sentence, maybe find a long sentence like this, which uses was to describe a thing. It was better than a word like better, e.g. and then use a word that you discovered somewhere. Maybe the Thesaurus, maybe a word list and replace. This was something with that word and make it very powerful. This thing, did this to something else. Wow, very powerful, very strong, but you have to play with it. Have fun with it, good luck with your practice. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about something very important, active and passive voice. So I will see you in the next one. 21. Overview of Active and Passive Voice: You may have heard some common writing advice. Don't use passive voice in your writing. That's not good. Is that true? Is that good advice? Is it bad advice? It's not that simple. We're going to of course, go into it. But let's first just say what active and passive voice are. What do these two things actually mean? Now to understand this, we're going to look at these three sentences here. And I apologize, we do have to talk about grammar a little bit, but it's not that hard. It's not that complicated. A local contractor remodeled the church. The church was remodeled by a local contractor. The church was remodeled. Okay. So first, let's do some labeling. We're going to label this. We're going to take this chunk here. And we're gonna call this the S for subject. We're going to take this here and we're going to label it as our V or verb. And we're going to take this here, and we're going to label it as r 0 or object. 0 means object. Okay? Now these are probably pretty familiar to you, subject verb object. This is the classic sentence structure of the English language. This is how we make our sentences. Subject, a verb, and an object. Now, what is the subject here? It's a local contractor. It could be I it could be you. It could be a donkey. It could be a local contractor. We consider this whole thing as the subject, even though it's more than one word, it is the subject. The subject is the thing or the person that is doing the action that the verb is related to, the one causing it to happen. The verb is the action. So if I say we ate pizza, subject is we write, if we say my family, subject is my family. If I say my cat, subject is my cat, ate verb, pizza. Pizza is the object. That is the thing that gets the action. The thing that the subject is doing, the verb to, we can say the thing or the person, or whatever noun, receiving the action or receiving the verb. Think of it this way. Here is, we group of people. Here is action arrow, and here is pizza. And this action is being caused by or done by the group of people. We, my family. And then this is the thing that it is happening to. The arrow represents the verb. Hopefully this is clear now, subject, verb, object. If we use this way, we are using active voice, that's all the active voice means. That means that we have this basic structure here, subject, verb, object, and that the subject is really the one that's doing the action. It really is this group of people. This group of people is eating the pizza. Okay, active voice should be clear. Now, we'll talk about in a moment when we should use it and maybe when we shouldn't. But first we have to explore the other side. This is passive voice. Now, in the next sentence, what do you notice? The church was remodeled by a contractor. Okay. So we have the same pieces here, but it looks a little different. What's different? Well, notice that the one doing the action is now at the end. In the object position, a local contractor. We still have our verb remodeled. So this is still our verb. I'm going to I'm just going to mark this v. Then we have the church, which was before our object, but it's now in the subject position. So what we've done is we've switched the subject and the object, and we've left the verb alone. But notice that we have here was, and sometimes we would use were as well. We're going to put something here between this thing, whatever it is, this person, this group, and the verb here, we don't do that. We say subject, then we say verb, nothing in-between. For this one we are going to put in this case was here. Then the verb, then. By then our original subject, the one still doing the action is this one's still doing the action? Yes. Yes, it is. This local contractor is still the one that's doing the action of remodeling. We use by, in the same way that you would say this book was written by a person. You've probably heard written by, filmed by createdBy. And then we say the name of the person or the role of the person to tell us who did this thing. But why would we even say that? Why don't we just say that person's name and then we say wrote this book. Why? Why? Well, there are two main reasons for this. And the first one is that we want to focus, focus not on the doer of the action, but on the object, on the object. But we don't want to get rid of the subject. We still want to mention the doer of the action is just less important. So reason number one is focus. We want to focus more on the object, then the subject, the subject is maybe less important, or maybe we're talking about the object more. That's the reason we're mentioning it. The second reason that will do it, main reason would be syntax. That's right. Sometimes we use this just to have variation in our writing makes it look a little more interesting. It's kind of refreshing to see a different kind of sentence owns the object first. Interesting. So active, again to be very clear, no confusion. Active S V 0, passive 0, v s. Okay? Now, which of these two is actually better? Both are grammatically correct. You could use either one. And the question which is better, is not that simple to answer. I can't just say this is better. This is better because it depends. What is the goal? Are you focusing on the local contractor? Are you doing this as a general description and you don't really care which is more of the focus. Well, in that case, maybe the active voice here is better. I don't really want to focus on the church. I don't really want to focus on the contractor. I just want to say what happened and move on. So the general, we call it a default. Default. The thing we automatically do that basic structure of English sentences would be this. But if we definitely want to focus on a local contractor, I would say, why aren't we using the name of the contractor? Paul Feldman and associates remodeled the church or whatever the contractor's name is. And we're focusing on oh, this is this contractor who did this work. Maybe we're talking about different projects in the community and this is one of the projects, one of the things remodeling means, make it like new, make it newer. And we're focusing on who's doing all of this work? Local contractor. Very good. But what if we're really talking about the church? What if the church is the topic of this conversation or this discussion or this description, it's the main thing. Oh, the church. It's been here for 60 years, starting to look old. Maybe it's time to remodel the church. Okay. So we did that. We hired a contractor. We described that in the past. Well, the church looks great. Have you seen the new remodel of the church? Yes, fantastic. The church was remodeled by a local contractor. Oh, okay. Very interesting. I don't know if that's actually interesting, but maybe it is. Okay. So we're focusing on that. And you have to think about when you're using either active or passive voice, what you're trying to do, generally, maybe just go with the default SVO. Or actually I'm talking more about the church. So then go with OVS. Or I've been using active voice a lot. I think I might use a passive voice sentence for syntax. Better variation of my sentences, different structures. Passive voice is one of the tools in your tool belt of variation of having interesting writing. Now, what about this third sentence? The church was remodeled? Well, what happened here? If I really don't care who did it? And this may be the most common use of passive voice. If I really don't care who did it, I delete all of this because it doesn't matter to me who did it. Nobody cares who did it. It happened. The church was remodeled. Now, this is different than active voice because this is the thing receiving the action. You can't say, Oh, this is here and then there's a verb, and then there's an action. It must be the regular sentence structure. No, it is still getting some action. It is still receiving it. It's still the object. It's just in the subject. Place. And we know that because we have was here and then this past tense verb. So when you see these kinds of sentences, usually this part is just taken off, but the grammar is not different. Just think of this and this as the same thing, minus this end part. Who did it? The diamond was stolen from the museum. The diamond was stolen from the Museum. This is on the news. This is what people care about. But we might want to say, who stole the diamond. Maybe we don't know, but we can still have a subject. So the diamond was stolen from the museum by a mysterious person dressed as a clown with a large mustache. All of that could be considered as the subject of the verb. Even though it's a lot of words, it can still be the subject of the verb. A mysterious person dressed as a clown with a large mustache. Is that what I said? Whatever whoever it is. Right. Even if we don't know a description, still the subject doesn't matter how many words it is. You can have a very long subject and you can have a subject that's just i. But if I goes in the object place, then it's not I anymore. It's me. If we goes in the object place than it's us. So I me, I think you already know this. We us. They them you you it it he him. It's an eye. She her. Okay. You get the idea. If you move the subject over and it's one of these pronouns, then you have to change it to the, we call it the object form of the pronoun. You probably, probably already know that. Now by a mysterious, what did I say? A mysterious man dressed as a clown with a large mustache, then you don't have to change anything because we're not using pronouns. But again, if we don't care about that, then we just don't have this part and we cross it out. And we say, the diamond was stolen from the museum. Stop. That's on the news. That's what people talk about. Now, maybe this is the story of a jewel thief, Kevin, who dresses up like a clown with a very large mustache and steals diamonds and gems for museums. Well, in that case, maybe it would make sense to do the active voice. So here's what you should ask yourself. What is my focus? What am I trying to say? Do I just want to describe it? I want to focus on the subject of the verb, the one doing the action. Okay? Do I care more about the object, the thing that happened to something or someone? Do I want to focus on what happened and to whom or to what? Okay. There you go. Do I feel like all of my sentences look very similar. Starting to feel a little boring, not much variation. Okay? Now if you always use passive voice, That's, that's going to be very hard to read. It's gonna be very tiring. So I generally would recommend using the default. And then for each of your sentences, think about this. What am I focusing on? And use that to improve your sentences. Use that to improve your syntax. So the question was, is that good advice? Don't use passive voice. I think the answer is no. No, of course you should use passive voice. And your use passive voice all the time to describe things that happened, of course, of course. But that doesn't mean you should always use passive voice. You've got to know when to use it. You've got to know how to use it. I hope this at least makes it pretty clear. Now what I like to do is as we usually do, focus on some examples so that we can really get a feel for this. So let's do that. 22. Awkward Usage of Passive Voice: One way to learn how to do something like use active and passive voice naturally is to learn how to do it with good examples. And we're going to look at some good examples. But the other way to learn how to do something is to learn how to not do it, or to learn some bad examples so that you can see what doesn't look good, what doesn't look natural. So we're going to look at four examples that use passive voice somewhat awkwardly, doesn't quite look right now. Why are we talking about active voice here? Because passive voice is kind of the special one. Of course, active voice, that's the default, right? So we have to look at really passive voice to learn this. And maybe we can make some changes to these to make them better. The foot ball was kicked by Luke. Now why is this strange? We know this structure right here is the, this is the object of the verb. This is the verb. And by the way, one thing I didn't mention before, this verb in passive voice is not just the past tense, it's called the past participle. That's a special kind of verb, a special tense, like been, seen, eaten, taken. Except often. The past participle and the regular past tense are the same. Like walked. Walked is the past participle and walked as the simple past tense. So they're the same, but sometimes not. And these are some examples. So Kicked would be same for both of them. So the verb and that's pass, alright, P, P here. So object. Then we have this. It doesn't have to be was, it could be were. And we could also use another thing here called past perfect tense. Past perfect, which we're not going to talk about in detail here, but this would be an example of that. So we'll look at that example in a second. And then we have y of course. And then Luke, which is our subject of the verb, doing the action. Now why is this weird? We're talking about a football. So do we want to focus on the football? When would we need to describe a football in this way as being kicked by someone? We're really talking about this great football. If the football has a name and it's a story about a football, then yes, maybe, maybe so. But usually for these simple actions where one person does something, kick a ball, eat a sandwich, and it's a very common everyday item or object or thing that's receiving the action everyday object of the verb, then it's probably going to be active voice. So I can't really think of any normal uses of passive voice for this sort of thing. Again, unless it's a very special situation, like we're really focusing on this football. It's a special golden football that was made by an elf or something like that. So this should be just active. Let's change this to Luke kicked the football. Okay, that works. Active. Still a little weird. It's not as weird. The knife was left on the table by Julie. The knife was left on the table by Julie. The reason that this one is a little bit odd is that if we're going to say this, then we should probably remove this because we're just describing what happened. We would rarely need to describe who did it. And if we were going to describe who did it for this everyday action, we would probably start with Julie. So the knife was left on the table. That sounds very natural to me focusing on the knife. I don't really care who did it. We get rid of by we get rid of Julie. Or if we're just describing an everyday action, a very common thing. That's not that special. Nothing particularly interesting about it. We use the default structure, subject, verb, object. Julie left a knife on the table. That sounds natural. Now, does that mean we're focusing on Julie and not focusing on the knife? No, not really. We're not focusing on the knife. We're not really focusing on Julie. Maybe we are, but maybe not. Maybe it's just the default. We're just describing the action, the thing that happened, and then we're moving on. So it would be either probably probably either this in passive voice without this or Julie left the knife on the table. The milk had been knocked over by a cat. The milk had been knocked over by a cat. Now, this could sometimes be okay, sometimes, but it really depends on the situation. When might we say the milk had been knocked over by a cat? Well, maybe I have a milk bottle, a glass bottle, and I put, when I buy a carton of milk, I pour it into the glass bottle and now I'm talking about needing to replace it. So I bought a new milk bottle last week because the milk had been knocked over by a cat. The milk and the bottle, of course, and that means it broke, it smashed on the floor. And so I had to in the past. Buy another bottle. So I am focusing on the bottle, the past activity to describe what I did then later, which is by another one. And that helps me give context to my past action. This is the past perfect tense. This is where something happened in the past and another thing happened in the past. Let's say this is a timeline like this. A timeline and this is now, and I'm describing this action, a past thing before another pass thing. What's this one? Bought new milk bottle. Bought new milk bottle. This is another past action that happened before. This past action. That's why this is called past perfect tense. Both things are in the past, and we're talking about the past of the past. If it's just past tense, we're talking about this. I bought a new milk bottle last week. Why? 0? Because the milk had been knocked over the week before. Ah, I see, I see. This is the context. Now. I know. Now I understand why you bought this. You're not just telling me that you bought it. You're telling me that this happened. So you bought it. So these two things kind of go together and that helps give this thing a bit more context. It helps, helps make it a bit more clear so that we can understand the reason that it happened. So notice this is been, instead of just the simple past, this would be, if this were a special verb, like one of these, this would also be here, but these two are the same as past participles and as the simple past. So that's why they just look like the simple past. This is special. In the simple past this would be, was, right, but with the passive voice, we're not using the simple past form. We're using the past participle after, in this case, had or was, or were. Is that clear? Does that make sense? If you have any questions about this or it's not perfectly clear, let me know and I'll be happy to try to make it more clear, but this is just the structure and I wanna make it clear when it doesn't look quite right, the car was driven into a wall by Dexter. Now we have a name here, someone's name, Dexter. So if we're saying Dexter the person's name, normally, it makes sense to just use the default. Dexter drove the car into a wall. That's what happened. That's part of my story. But maybe I want to have better syntax. So I want to say it differently. Okay, So maybe I use the car was driven into a wall by Dexter. So it's not wrong to use it like this, but it is a bit odd and you'd only use it if you really, really want to vary your sentences and have better syntax once in awhile, to use something like this, it will feel a little strange for people reading it if it's used too often, especially normally though, I would recommend just using Dexter, drove the car into a wall or if we're talking about what happened to the car, whatever the car oh, car was driven into a wall. But even then what happened to the car? If we want to blame the person who did it, then we'll probably still just say Dexter drove the car into a wall because we want to focus on the person who is to blame, right? Yes. Yes, it is. About the car. That's true. But I'm angry at Dexter because dexter is the cause of it. Dexter's the idiot who did it, right? So even then, I might more often use the active voice. Dexter drove the car into a wall unless I really, really, really don't care who did it. And I'm just talking about my car would happen to my car. Then I'll say the car and my car was driven into a wall without Dexter because It's my car. I'm so upset about my car. My car. My car, my car. And I didn't even know who did it. I guess his name was Dexter, but I don't know. I'm not really focused on that. It happened and I'm upset about my car and that's what I care about. I'm not focused on blaming anyone, just upset about my car. So then it would be natural to use the passive voice. I hope this makes sense. Let's now go on and look at some natural ways to use passive voice. 23. Using Active and Passive Voice Naturally: I'd like to make it clear before we look at these last four examples, that there isn't always a clear right or wrong answer when it comes to a lot of the things in this course, but also, and especially for active and passive voice, you get to choose. This is your choice. I'm trying to help you get a sense for when it sounds natural. Usually when it might not sound natural, or when you might want to use one instead of another. But it does come down to you. And if you know what you're doing, and if you say no, I want to use passive voice here. I think it sounds right. This feels like what I want to say. Then go ahead as long as you know why you're doing it. So I think that's really important to remember. I'm trying to give you tools in this course. I am not trying to tell you what you must do and what you absolutely must not do. Absolutely not. I'm trying to give you a broader picture of what good writing can look like, how you can improve your skills. The tools that you need to be more clear to write more simply, more effectively, more powerfully, more vividly. So don't take away from this lesson, especially, Oh, look told me I cannot use passive voice there. No, that's not what I said. I'm saying it would probably be odd if you did in this case, but maybe sometimes use it the other way. If nothing is that simple, nothing is a clear black and white. At least many things are not. Okay, So just keep that in mind and let's look at these last four examples. A stone smashed the window. This active or passive stone, subject, smash, verb, object, window. Simple. Now, is this good? Is it okay? Yeah, it's okay. It's alright. But are we usually focusing on the thing that smashed the window? Sometimes. But often we're focused on my window. My window. What about my window? So usually here we'll say the window or my window was smashed, was broken, was shattered. And then you have the option to say bias stone or not, buy a baseball or not. If it doesn't really matter what smashed the window, you don't really care to mention it then just don't say it. My window was smashed. Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that. And by the way, you could also say, my window got smashed, you can use got there sometimes as well to replace was that's totally fine. My window got smashed yesterday. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. Now I have to go buy a replacement window. Yeah. Well, it happens. Life is tough. So we're just giving a little background to explain why we're now going to buy a new window. I left the TV on all night. Now, maybe this is good. I'm blaming myself. Oh, I feel so bad about what I did. I left the TV on all night. I'm such an idiot. I wasted all that electricity, e.g. okay. Fine. But but the TV was left on all night. Maybe it just happened. A parent trying to figure out who did it. The TV was left on all night by one of you? By one of you? My four children was a u with a you, was it you who did it? Then? Then someone might say, i'm, I'm sorry, I left the TV on. Then it makes sense to use AI first to answer the question. I, I left the TV on all night focusing on me. Now I get my punishment or maybe because I've been honest, I'm not punished as much. But when we're talking about the event, the thing that we're focusing on, this is the bad thing that happened. The TV was left on all night. Then maybe we don't need to say it. Get rid of the I get rid of the one of you. Get rid of that and just say, This thing happened. The TV was left on all night. That would be a very natural way to use passive voice. Three masked men robbed the bank. Three masked men rob the bank, or the bank was robbed by three masked men. Now this is similar to our, our diamond example. If there are three masked men, that's not that special. I mean, aren't all bank robbers masked? If they're not, they're stupid. You have to have to wear a mask if you're going to rob a bank, of course. So does that matter? Not unless it's a story about three masked men. But then it's probably going to be someone's name or the name of a group of criminals or something like that, then we'll mention it because it's special. This is pretty generic. Just three masked men. It's not really about them, is it notes about this? So if you see this on the news, e.g. it will probably be the bank was robbed last night. We'll add maybe when it happened, The bank was robbed last night at around 10:30 P.M. okay. Then maybe we could say by three mass men, you could add that by the way, as a detail. It's kind of a, by the way. Oh, by the way, three masked men. By three masked men. Or get rid of it. Maybe we don't even need that because we're not focused on it. It's a news story about this special unusual thing that happened to the bank. It's not every day that the bank gets robbed, right? Okay, So this would be a very good place to use the passive voice. Groomed the horse before the race. Are we focused on ourselves? Okay, it's a general description of our activities, are focused on all the things we have to do today. Maybe a sequence of tasks. We groomed the horse before the race and made sure that she had enough food. And then we went into the barn and we washed down all the stalls and then we did this and then we did that. Okay. So we're talking about our activities, were talking about the things that we're doing there. I think active voice would make perfect sense. But often it's about the horse. The horse is the one we talk about. When we're talking about a horse race, e.g. we talk about the name of the horse and how fast the horses and the strengths, weaknesses, and what happens to the horse to prepare for the race. And so very likely you will hear when people are talking about the race. Yes. And the horse was groomed before the race and then we'll probably not say by them. That's very strange. Buy them, Who's them? Or by the owners. Of course it's by the owners. If it's obvious who did it, the owners of the horse groomed the horse, then we don't need to say it. It's implied. So often, we use the passive voice and take out the we or the owners, the subject of the verb. We take that out, especially when it is implied, especially when it is implied. So if I say the TV was left on all night and I live by myself, I want to focus on the TV. And why do I need to say I left the TV on all night? Why do I need to say that? I live alone? Maybe I live by myself. So of course it was me who did it. I don't need to say by me. And I might not say I left the TV on all night because I'm focusing on the TV. And it's implied. That means, you know, it because it couldn't be anything else. It would be very weird if it were anything else or anyone else. If it were anything or anyone else, then I'd probably say it. I would say by or I would start with that because that's interesting. That's different. Otherwise, it's obvious. You don't even need to say it. You don't really need to say who groomed the horse, if it were someone other than the owner of the horse or the person who works for the owner, that that would be odd. And it might be worth mentioning. So e.g. it might be the horse was groomed before the race by Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. What why is she she grooming the horse? She like horses. I didn't know this. That would be very weird and unusual and surprising. So then we would say by Taylor Swift and it's worth mentioning odd, kind of strange, unusual. Or we would say, Taylor Swift groomed the horse before the race because that's an unusual thing and we might start with her because we're focusing on her. I hope that makes sense. So for this one, the best way, at least the most common way to say this would be the horse was groomed before the race. And we don't need to say anything else because we already know. If you have any questions about this, let me know. Practice. Find in your reading, find some sentences that are active voice, that could be passive voice. And practice writing passive voice sentences, find ones that work as both. It could be active, it could be passive and write it the other way. If it's active voice, practice writing passive voice. If it's passive voice, practice changing that to active voice. See if it works, see if it looks natural. So good luck with that, and I will see you in the next lesson. 24. Overview of Modifiers: In this lesson, we're going to talk about modifiers. We'll talk about what that means. We'll talk about how we use modifiers to improve our writing. And probably most importantly, how we can avoid some common issues, common problems that can cause our writing to be a little bit confusing. That's actually the real reason that we're going to talk about modifiers in this lesson. The real reason is that I want you to avoid some common mistakes. These common mistakes can really cause your writing to be misleading or can cause confusion, which of course, if we want to be clear, we should avoid. So let's just say what a modifier is. First, a modifier is word or phrase, which describes, we could say describes, adds meaning to another word or phrase. Now if that's not clear, don't worry. We're going to look at these examples so that we can understand the basic idea. But now you might be thinking, well, that's sounds pretty general. A word or phrase which describes or adds meaning to another word or phrase, wouldn't that include an adjective? Yes. Wouldn't that include a word that tells me how many or how much of something there is? Yes. Wouldn't that include something like the word Vis which tells me which one I'm talking about. Yes. And more. These kinds of words and phrases which give meaning to another word and sometimes phrase. These are what we call modifiers, and this is not a deep grammar course. So we're not going to go in great depth on these. But what we will do is look at a few examples just to make sure it's clear how we use these, what exactly modifiers are. And then we'll talk about those common issues, those common mistakes or ways to accidentally cause confusion with an incorrectly used modifier. So let's take a look here. I'll refreshing drink. Is refreshing. Describing drink. Yes. So we're adding an adjective to drink. Noun. And refreshing. Adjective is modifying, modifies a great word to really remember it because that's what it's doing. It's telling you more about the thing. If it's something that tells you more about that, it could be a verb too, then we can call it a modifier. So this tells me something about that. So it's a modifier that really dangerous neighborhood. Which one? That one, that's a, that's a modifier. Really, this is an adverb, really dangerous neighborhood. Now you could say that these two together modify neighborhood. You could say that really modifies dangerous and then dangerous modifies neighborhood however you want to think of it. It doesn't really matter because the point is, this is being modified. This is a modifier. This is a modifier, and this is a modifier. It's telling me which one, not this one, but that one. It's telling me how much really. And it's also telling me an adjective here. What kind of how much, Which kind. And for all of these together, we're talking about neighborhood. So we can say combined all of these act as a modifier of this, of neighborhood. Too many appointments. Now this one is about how much of something we have. This is limiting, how much we know that it's more than what is good. And it's not probably not a little bit. So it's telling us something about quantity. This is actually called a quantifier. It's telling us something about the quantity. And that is also about this noun here. This is about appointments, okay, So this is our modifier. They laughed immediately. They laughed immediately, immediately tells us when they left. This is of course, an ad verb. Because it's telling us about the action. An adverb tells us about the verb, the thing that happened here, immediately, the adverb is modifying left. When did they laugh? Immediately? Oh, now I know something more about laughed. So it's telling me more or describing something about this firm. Okay. So we're getting a better picture of this. Let's go after the announcement. After the announcement, this whole thing is what we might call a prepositional phrase. Not that you really need to remember that. This is a phrase which starts with a preposition and tells us something about the location that something is happening in, or the general situation that's going on. This is not about their location, this is about time. So this is a prepositional phrase which is modifying. That's right, modifying go. It is telling us something about go. Let's go. When should we go? Tell me something more about go. Let's go after the announcement. That means when the announcement is finished, we will go. So I hope that's clear. The tree laying across the street needs to be removed. Which tree are we talking about? Let's identify the tree. This phrase laying across the street could be also over there, or the tree behind my house, something like that. It's the same idea. The tree laying across the street needs to be removed. So this phrase here is modifying tree, modifying the tree. So it's a pretty broad category. It's a pretty big category. So don't get too worried about what exactly is a modifier. I need to understand this 100%. I just want to give you a general sense for what a modifier is before we look at these, these common issues. So let's now take a look at some common problems that come up when we're using modifiers. 25. How to Avoid Confusion with Modifiers: Now as I mentioned, the main purpose for us to talk about modifiers is to make sure that we can avoid some common issues, avoid some common things that cause writing to be confusing. If our goal is to be clear, to be effective, to be efficient, to be simple, to be strong, then we obviously don't want people to feel confused. So let's, let's look at this and let me know if you feel confused when you read these sentences. Tina went to the restaurant in a bus. Now, what does that mean exactly? What's your understanding? Can you tell me for sure? I'll bet. Some of you think it means that the restaurant is located in a bus. And I'll bet some of you, most of you think that it's about how Tina got to the restaurant. But because it's beside restaurant, you would be right to guess, or at least you could be right to guess that it is a special kind of restaurant, very interesting type of local restaurant that's been made inside of a bus. It's a cool restaurant on the street. There's a bus park there. They make tacos or whatever sounds, sounds interesting. So what is this about? Is this thing about restaurant or is this thing this phrase about went? About the going, how she went, which is at modifying. I'm not sure. I think whoever wrote this probably meant about wins because usually we go places in buses. But we're causing some confusion here because 5% of people might read it like this. Now, how do we fix this? Well, one very simple way to fix it is to use a relative clause that can help us make sure that it's clear which thing we're talking about. Remember, we use relative clauses to add meaning to nouns. So a relative clause is going to be beside a noun and the thing that it is about. So if I say Tina went to a restaurant comma, which was in a bus, that tells me very clearly what? That tells me that we're talking about this cool kind of restaurant, which is built inside of a bus, which is very interesting. If we want to say went, then we have several different things we can do. Tina, simplest way to do it would be something like Tina took very easy, right? Took a bus to the restaurant. That's a lot better. That's more straightforward. Or if we want to put bus at the end, we can. Tina went to the restaurant. And then instead of saying in a bus, which is not really how we talk about transportation. When we're talking about a mode, a mode of transportation we often use by, by bus, by bike, biplane, bicarb, by taxi. We use BY. So that indicates or tells us that, hey, this is the mode of transportation. The n, one doesn't always tell us about transportation. It can tell us about all kinds of things. So that's another reason it's confusing. So just be careful when you're choosing something like this, that you're not confusing the person reading it and making them think about it, forcing them to think which one is it, I'm not sure. Makes sure that there's only one way to understand it. So when you're writing, read through your sentence and just ask yourself, do I have any modifiers? Hear things about other words in the sentence or other phrases that are modifying them. Is it clear which thing is being modified? Which word is being modified? If so, great. If not, try something else, change it around. Change a word, change a word, add a new piece of grammar. And that might help you clarify it, really, if you just read back through your sentences after you write something, you should always read it and I recommend doing it out loud. You should be able to catch a lot of these small issues. We walked along the lake covered in ice. We walked along the lake covered in ice. Very interesting. So what is our modifier here? Covered in ice? Now what is happening? Is the lake covered in ice? Or are we covered in ice? Maybe we're covered in ice and we're walking along the lake. Or maybe we're walking along the lake and the lake is covered in ice. This could be either one, the way that it is currently written. And of course, that's confusing. Now you might say, oh, yes, but how often are people covered in ice? Of course, it's the lake that's covered in ice. Well, sometimes people have ice on them. I mean, yes, it's less likely that's true. But that's an excuse to not be clear. Grammatically. That's kind of like saying, Oh, they know what I mean. No. No, they don't know what you mean. They don't know what's in your head. It's your job to create a beautiful little piece of art with every single sentence to make sure when they read it, the sentence that you wrote, it pops in their mind. It's very vivid. They understand what you mean. They don't have to have that momentary thought of it. They're covered in ice. Even though yes, that's unlikely of course, but it could be. There are things that could happen that could cause people to be covered in ice. It's possible. And so make it more clear. Now, one of the things we could do to make it clear that we are the ones covered in ice, would be to say something like this. Covered in ice. Comma. We did it ended up. That means because I put it right in front of the Wii, this whatever you put here in front of this comma. And then right before the subject of the sentence is going to be about the subject of the sentence. You can't have this, and then it's not about this. You can't say, Oh, this is actually about something much, much later covered in ice. We walked along the lake and I mean that the lake is covered in ice. No, no, no. That doesn't make sense. So position here can fix this problem if we want to say that we're very cold and for whatever reason we are covered in ice, right? It makes it very clear. It's a simple way to fix the problem. If we want to say that the lake is covered in ice, we can do what we did here if we want to. We could say, which was covered in ice. We walked along the lake, comma, which was covered with ice or which was covered in ice? I think maybe with ice would be a little more common there. That would be fine. You could do that, but be creative here. Is there another way? It's actually a very simple way to change the modifier a little bit, make it an adjective modifier for Lake. We walked along the icy lake. We walked along the icy lake. This couldn't possibly be about us, the people walking, because it's right in front of Lake. Adjectives go in front of nouns. You put the adjective there. It can't possibly be anything else. So that makes it very clear as well, problem-solved. And I'm not saying that this is the only way to solve the problem. There are more. I just wanted you to be aware of the problems that when you're modifiers could be about two or three things, confusion happens. So you've got to fix it, you're going to notice it, and you've got to play with it until, Oh, that makes more sense. This will be understood and it's very clear. People will know that I mean, that the lake is IC, That's what I want to say. Now, another issue that happens is this one. This one happens sometimes and you have to be very aware and try to stay away from it. Having prepared for the trip, it was the perfect time to leave. What's the issue here? What is being modified exactly? Having prepared for the trip. Remember I said, if you put something in front of the comma here at the beginning of the sentence. All kinds of different phrases you could put here prepositional phrases, noun phrases, all kinds of different things. Starting with an I-N-G, that's very common as well. All of those are okay. Then this will be about this next thing. Having prepared for the trip. It it or we modifying it. What does the ID here? It was wait a second. I'm very confused because it looks like I should be modifying whatever this is. But this is not something which can really be modified because this whole thing, let's just call it a situation. Can't prepare for a trip. Situations don't prepare for trips. Being in a state of perfect time to leave whenever this is, can't say okay, let me pack my bags. It's not possible, It doesn't make sense. So it's a common problem and it's easy to fix. All we have to do is make sure we have a subject. We don't have a subject. This sentence doesn't have a subject. Having prepared for the trip, Alexa decided decided it was time to leave. Ah, okay. Now it makes more sense. Having prepared for the trip, Alexa, having prepared for the trip, comma, and then having prepared for the trip, I'll write it out here. Having prepared for the trip, comma Alexa, just like this one that we talked about, whatever this is in front of the comma is going to be about whatever subject this is before we didn't have a subject. Now we do now all of this this state this condition is about Alexa. Okay. And then she's going to do something. She's going to decide. So we need to have the verb there, the past tense verb, the action that Alexa takes. What is the action? She's deciding that it is the perfect time to leave. So that's how we fix those. Make sure that your sentences have subjects. It's important to know what you're talking about exactly. Sometimes the modifiers are there, modifiers are right? But they're not modifying anything. Or at least they're trying to modify something that can't be modified. So I hope this is clear. Now we're going to go on and talk about how the placement of a modifier can affect the meaning of the sentence. And that we have to be very careful with where we put modifiers sometimes. So let's, let's take a look at that. 26. Only This Lesson Only Focusus on 'Only': The word only, which is a modifier, often results in confusion because of how it is placed in the sentence. And often it's put in the wrong place. And because it's put in the wrong place, it changes the meaning. What you think you mean when you write this sentence is not what you really mean. You meant this, but another person understood it totally differently because actually you should have placed modifier and the modifier only in a different place. Maybe that's a little confusing, not so clear. So of course we explore through examples. Let's look at the word only. And I'm talking about this one because it is the most common misplaced modifiers. And of course, there are others. So you have to keep an eye out for them and be very careful with where you place them, but especially, especially only. So let's look at the meanings of these. I only go golfing when I visit my parents. Only I go golfing when I visit my parents, I go golfing only when I visit my parents. What do each of these mean? Well, let's explore them. I only go golfing when I visit my parents probably means actually it could have two different meanings, but probably means, which is a little bit strange. This is the only thing I do. This is my only activity. I don't go shopping, I don't do other things. I don't I don't shop. I don't maybe watch TV. So here we might be expressing how much I golf. I'm so focused on it that I'm obsessed with it. And I do this only when I'm there for whatever reason, maybe my family members also golf and so that's what I'm totally focused on. So whenever I visit home, I only go golfing. Don't do anything else. That's probably what this means. No other activity. No other activity. Now, some people might take this to mean that I go golfing only when this happens, but that really is the third meaning, especially so it can cause some confusion. That means I don't golf. I don't golf unless I'm visiting my parents. But if we're going to follow the grammar here, it should be something like it's the only activity that I do and I don't do other activities. Only. I go golfing when I visit my parents. So that means I go golfing alone. What is the Only in front of? That's the thing that it is talking about. That's what it's modifying only as modifying, go golfing the activity. Okay. And so that means not the other activities only i is modifying I. That means I'm alone, not with others, only my brother and I. That means still no others join us. Know others. This is like no others. I'm alone when I golf. I go golfing only when I visit my parents. Now only is modifying this whole phrase. And we could replace this phrase if we want to make it simpler with, then when I, when I visit my parents, I go golfing only then. Which means I don't go golfing at any other time. I don't go golfing when I'm at my own home. There are no other times that I golf I only golf at this time when I visit my parents. So you can see just changing around The only has a big impact on the meaning. And I say this, we talk about this so that we can get a feeling for the importance of placement and how easy it is to cause confusion. So just be aware of this, whether it's only or other modifiers, but especially only, be aware of this and make sure that what you think you mean is understood as what you think you mean by others. So that might mean looking up other examples sentences. It might mean getting feedback from friends. If you have a writing partner, that's fine. But just make sure you're careful about this. Read back through your sentences after you write them, and make sure it means what you think it means. Okay, so that is it for this lesson. Let me know if you have any questions and I will see you in the next one. 27. Defining Good Syntax: Throughout this course, so far, you've heard me talk a lot about syntax, but we haven't focused on just syntax. And in this section of the course, that's what we're going to do. We're going to go in depth to really learn how to make sure you have good syntax. And in this lesson, I'd like to just cover a couple of ideas, a couple of things that I'd like you to keep in mind as we go through this section on syntax. Good syntax is kind of hard to define, like we talked about. It's not just about being correct. Yeah, Of course you're using correct grammar. I'm assuming that all of the sentences you write have correct grammar, but it's more than that. And that's what makes it kind of hard to define. It's not a right or wrong thing. It's an interesting thing. And it being interesting, what you write is an important part of syntax. I think the simplest, most perfect thing that can capture what good syntax is, is this well crafted? Well-crafted? Are your sentences well crafted? That means have you taken care to make your sentences say exactly what you want them to say? Have you really been careful about why you're using this kind of grammar? Why you're using this sentence structure? Why this sentence is this long? Why you decided to use a shorter sentence? Why this goes before this or that goes before that. Why? It's all this process of being careful and really thinking of your writing as sounds a little strange. Thinking of it as art. If you start to think of what you write as art, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for how you could say what you want to say. You're not just communicating things, even if it's an email, a very dry email to a client or a colleague, that is still something that you can think of as art. When you write something, you're writing from your unique human perspective, everybody is different. Everybody has a different way of thinking. And what you write is really, as we've talked about, you taking your ideas out of your very special unique brain and trying to fit them into sentences using words, using grammar. But it's not about the words and the grammar. It's about you taking your uniqueness, what's going on in here? The idea that's in here, the meaning that's in here, the description that's in here, and putting it down into words in a perfect way. Perfect, not meaning, only perfect grammar. Perfect meaning, yes, this is what I mean. Yes, this is clear. Yes, people understand this in the way that I mean it. And in order to do that, you have to be quite careful. You have to craft your sentences like an artist. So I hope if you haven't already, then you start thinking of your writing in this way. And if you just take that perspective, each sentence is a work of art. If you just think of it that way you're writing is going to improve. And it's going to get more interesting. And that really is the key. Good syntax means your writing is more interesting. It engages the reader. They don't get bored. They don't stop reading halfway through because it's kind of confusing. They're gripped by your sentence. Your sentence grabs them and holds their interests. That's what we want. Just today, I was helping someone with their writing and I was reading it and I noticed something right away. Every sentence started with, I have been I've been I have been I've been by the time I got halfway through the paragraph, I was lost. Not because I couldn't understand the sentences, but because I was bored, I lost interest because it wasn't grabbing me. So it's not the ideas. It's not that these sentences are incorrect. It's that, it's not interesting. It's not engaging. So we're going to look at a couple of examples. And then in the next few lessons, we are going to go in-depth on syntax. We're going to talk about how to do and when to do longer sentences, shorter sentences, and how we can use structure to make those longer and shorter sentences. We're also going to talk about intention a bit, and we're going to focus on punctuation, which is a very important part of having good syntax. Now, there are three things to always have in mind when you're writing to make sure you have good syntax. The three things are variety, length, and craft. Do you have enough variety in your writing? There are many ways to structure a sentence, many different kinds of structures. And you can use those to make sure you're writing has variety. That every sentence doesn't look the same. That you're using different kinds of structures to say what you want to say and that it's not too repetitive. This is one of the keys to making sure that your writing is really engaging. Length, as we've talked about before, this is another key part of good syntax. If every sentence is very long or every sentence is very short, then it's either going to be strange or it's going to be confusing and tiring. Every sentence is so long I feel like I have to do a lot of work just to read this whole sentence. Now, if it's one or two whole sentences that are long, great. But if all of them are very long, that's going to be very tiring. If all of them are very short, that might be tiring in a different way. Tiring and maybe annoying to read. You start to feel irritated by all these sentences. That can be very strange, a strange experience. And then craft. This is always the reminder to yourself that the first version of a sentence or a paragraph is probably not the best it could be. So you go back and you read it again. And you think, well, maybe if I move this around or maybe if I made these two sentences, one sentence, or maybe if I split this up into two sentences. Or maybe if I started with a prepositional phrase or an I-N-G verb. Or maybe if I did this or maybe if I did that and you start playing with it and changing it and doing different versions of it, then you're going to, as you do it, find these new ways to say it and it's going to click into place. And you're going to say, Yes, it's like a process of discovery. So thinking of this as a craft, thinking of this as a thing that you're making like a little bird house out of wood. You're making every sentence is a little bird house out of wood. Maybe if I move this or if I paint this here, maybe if I change this a little bit, There it is. Yes. That satisfying feeling when it clicks into place and it says exactly what you want to say, what is in your head. So always remember that what you're doing is a craft. This is a craft, just like making a bird house or a work of art is a craft. And I know that might sound strange, but I promise if you start thinking in this way, your syntax is going to get a lot better. This is just a reminder, just a reminder to yourself. So let's just look at two sentences side-by-side, so that we can see bad syntax compared to better syntax. 28. Examples of Bad and Good Syntax: In these two examples, we're going to look at, I want you to notice structure, variety, and I want you to notice length. And I want you to think about how you feel when I read the first sentence and how you feel when I read the second. And then think about why is it that one feels very different from the other? When the meeting is about the same, I put on my jacket, I went outside, I needed things from Kroger. I bought a coffee on the way. I slipped my coffee. I enjoyed the cool spring air. It was so nice. I put on my jacket and headed out to get some things from Kroger. On my way, I grabbed a coffee and sipped it as I enjoyed the cool spring air. So nice. So which of these has better syntax? Well, it should obviously be the second one. Could we ever say it like this ever? Well, never say never. But we would have to have a really good reason for doing that. And I can't think of a good reason. Look at how these sentences begin. I, I, I, I, so many eyes. So I know this is kind of an extreme example, but I want to use it to highlight the importance of syntax. The other problem is every sentence is short. So when you read it, it starts to feel very robotic, like someone talking like this one word at a time. Strange, weird. Now you might say, okay, well, let's just make it longer. I put on my jacket and then I went outside because I needed things from Kroger. I bought a coffee on the way and I sipped my coffee and I enjoyed the cool spring air. That still doesn't sound good. Just longer doesn't mean better syntax. To be very, very clear, better syntax doesn't mean a bunch of ends or n thens, no, no. What are you trying to say? And how can you link things together so that it flows, so that it sounds logical, natural, so that when you read it, it feels Very interesting. I like this. I don't know exactly why I like it, but I like it. Well, this section is about why you like it. That's what we're going to be focusing on. Now in this one. What's different? What are we doing? I put on my jacket and headed out to get some things from Kroger. So we're connecting the reason to the action. We have one end, but it's okay on my way. So now we're connecting that to the previous part. We know what's going on, we know the situation. And so we can connect that by using, on my way with a comma. I put on my jacket and headed out to get some things from Kroger, have a reason here to do something. And that is connected to these two things that I'm doing, heading out and putting on my jacket, they're connected. I use one and that's okay. Not too many hands right? On my way. This is taking this and connecting it to the earlier thing that I'm describing. So they're flowing together naturally. But I have started a new sentence. I've started a new sentence here because this previous sentence completes the idea or the thought that I want to complete on my way. I grabbed a coffee and that's our second end and I think that's okay. We're using only two in this paragraph. So far. I grabbed a coffee and sipped it as I enjoyed the cool spring air. So I connect together, enjoy the cool spring air and drinking coffee at the same time, I make them side-by-side. They're happening at the same time. And I can sort of picture this person walking along and doing this at the same time, I get a pretty clear picture as I enjoyed the cool spring air. Then one little sentence at the end. So nice, which makes the whole thing kind of pop. It makes the whole thing pop. And again, this is just one way of doing it. We could try many variations. Of course we can play with it. And I would encourage you to do that. See if you can take this one and do a variation that has better syntax than this one. That's not very hard to do. Doesn't have to be like this one at all. It can be totally different. Describe it in your way. Use your craft. Think carefully about why you're choosing the sentence structures, why you're choosing to say it this way. Practice that and in the next lesson, we're going to be getting into longer sentences. So I'll see you there. 29. Overview of Dependent and Independent Clauses: When we want to build a longer sentence, how do we do it? So that it's interesting that the syntax is good. So that it's not just and, and, and because we don't want to have too much of that, right, how do we do this? There are a lot of different ways to do that, of course. And in this lesson, we're going to explore some of the most useful, some of the most common, of course, with examples. Sometimes you may see a longer sentence and think, wow, that's such a good sentence. It's so complicated. How could I ever do that? I just don't know. But if you really study it, you'll find often that it's a lot simpler than it looked at first, if you really look at it, the pieces are not that complicated. Longer sentences are made up of simpler parts. The simpler parts that I want to talk about now are called clauses. And we talked about clauses, we talked about relative clauses. Remember who? That in which, so what is a clause Exactly? Well, maybe we can imagine a, a wall. I'm going to draw a wall. And this wall is made up of smaller things. And let's call those smaller things. I really apologize for my poor drawing. Let's call these smaller pieces blocks. These blocks make up the wall. Well, in the same way, a sentence is made up of smaller parts, of course made up of words. But I'm not just talking about individual words. I'm talking about units like phrases and clauses. So a clause is one of these smaller units, like a block, which help make up sentences. Now, a sentence can be the same as a clause sometimes, and we'll talk about that in just a second. But generally speaking, we can say that a clause is one of the building blocks along with e.g. phrases that make up sentences. It's not just any building block, it has a certain structure. We say that a clause has a subject and a predicate. Let's call it a verb. It's actually called a predicate, but let's not learn too many new words all at once. A verb about the subject, That's the predicate. It's the verb about the subject. A clause is made up of a subject and a verb about the predicate. That's what it is. That's the structure. If you don't have that and maybe it's just a small group of words. Maybe it's a phrase. Clause needs to have these two things. Now, sometimes the subject is implied, that means it's sort of suggested that it's there, but it's not really there. But let's not talk about that. That's kind of a special case. So what would be an example of this? Well, a subject, subject is we I e.g. my team like that. So let's just use Luke. Luke. And then we need a verb about Luke. To make it a clause. Luke dances, lute dances. This is a clause. Now, what kind of clause is this? Is it a dependent clause or is it an independent clause? What are these dependent independent clause? What's going on? Don't worry, we'll get there. Follow along with me. Okay? So we have a subject, we have a verb about the subject. Now we need to ask ourselves, this, is this a complete thought? Is this a complete thought? That means can we just read this subject and verb together and understand? Someone just says, lute dances, where we say, okay, alright, I understand. Yes, it is a complete thought by itself. So that makes it this type. An independent clause is a clause which can stand by itself, which could be a sentence all by itself. So an independent clause can be a sentence all by itself, such as Luke dances or Luke bought it. Luke bought it. Is that a complete thought? Does that have a subject and a verb about the subject? Yes. Can we hear this and understand it? Look, bought it. Yeah. I understand. I understand that. That makes sense. Maybe I don't know what it is. Maybe I said that earlier, but it makes sense. It's a complete thought. It's a sentence by itself. So then, don't we just say that independent clauses and sentences are the same thing. I thought you said, the wall is made up of blocks. I thought you said clauses are building blocks in sentences. Now you're telling me that an independent clause is a sentence. Well, in this case it is, but sentences are often longer. Sentences are often made up of many clauses. Independent clauses. Dependent clauses, as you know, sentences can be very long and have a lot of different parts. But a clause is just this, is just this. So it's still a piece. And in this case, yes, it is the same as the sentence. Yes. But if we were to take this sentence and make it much longer by adding a lot of parts. Lute dances whenever he gets in the mood or here's some really good music. Now, this sentence is more complicated. Now it's made up of more than one clause. So we can still say that the clause is the building block of the sentence, or one of the building blocks of the sentence, one of the units of the sentence that's usually smaller than a sentence. But in this case, if it's an independent clause, can be a sentence by itself. So what about dependent clauses? Well, you might be able to guess. These cannot stand alone by themselves. These have to be added to sentences, e.g. they have to be added to a dependent clause to give more detail, to add something to the meaning of the dependent clause to make the sentence longer. Now we're getting to the point of this lesson. So we generally then have these two things, dependent clauses and independent clauses to use as our blocks Building longer sentences. They are our main tool, our most important blocks for building longer sentences. So what would be an example of a dependent clause? Well, we said Luke dances and then we might add, whenever he is in the mood. Whenever he is in the mood, Do we have a subject? Do we have a verb about the subject? Yes and yes. This is a clause. This is a dependent clause because if I just say whenever he is in the mood, do you understand what I'm saying? You might say, wait, what are you talking about? It's not a complete thought. You can't understand it by itself. This is the thing that we use to attach to other things, to add meaning, to add detail. But they don't make sense by themselves. So that's the difference between dependent and independent clauses. And it's very important to understand this before we start actually building out these sentences. Now, you can often identify a dependent clause by this thing. This is the hook which latches on to the other part of the sentence. This is the thing that sticks this part to the independent clause. This whenever. And there are a lot of different hooks that can be used to attach these to other things in the sentence. Some examples, common examples with after, though. Even if in order to because. So that rather than Whereas if by itself. And we've already talked about which who, that, and there are a lot more, there are many of these and we can think of them as little hooks that grab on. But if we just have one of these plus this part with the subject and also the verb about the subject. Then by itself, again, it's not going to make sense if you want to. Nope, doesn't make sense with my Aunt Carol. After we left. After we left. After we left what? So that I don't forget. So that I don't forget. Alright, because we have two. Because we have two, because we have two because we have to what? So these can be part of dependent clauses and these can be used for other things as well. But I just want to make it clear that they can't stand alone as sentences like independent clauses can. Okay, so now that we understand this, let's look at some examples. 30. Examples of Dependent and Independent Clauses: Now that we know what a clause is, now that we know what dependent clauses are, an independent clauses are, Let's explore some example sentences so that we can really get a feeling for these. Alice bought coffee. Alice is our subject. Bought is our verb about our subject and coffee is what you bought. Is this a thought by itself? Can it be a sentence by itself? Yes, it's a complete thought. This is an independent clause. It's also a sentence. Alice stopped reading. Alice's, our subject. Stopped is the verb about the subject and reading is what she stopped doing. This is the main verb about the subject, okay? Alice found her shoes. That's our subject. That's our verb about our subject. And this is what she found. Is this a complete thought? Yes. Is this an independent clause? Yes. Is this a sentence? Yes. Okay. So that should be pretty clear. Now, what about adding dependent clauses to the same thing to make the sentence a little longer by adding dependent clauses. So Alice bought coffee after she got off work. So our dependent clause would be after she got off work, after is the word that hooks the dependent clause to the independent clause. Why have we added it? Well, it gives us more detail. It explains more about the situation when it happened. Now we know and she subject got off work. That's the thing about the subject. So that's pretty clear. Now you might have the question in your mind, can I put this first and then this? Does it have to be in this order? This is the great thing about these. Often, you can just reverse them. But if you do that, you have to make sure you use a comma. After she got off work. Comma, Alice bought coffee or Alice bought a coffee. So you can start with after. Sometimes you might think, I really like this paragraph. This is a great description. I'm pretty happy with it, but I wanna make my syntax a little more interesting. Maybe what you can do is just reverse these and start with after. And that might be very interesting. We could also do getting instead of she got. That's a way to take out the subject, but it's still kind of there by suggestion. So we could say, after getting off work, comma, Alice bought coffee, or Alice bought coffee after getting off work. And that sounds really natural. That's a nice sentence. Alice stopped reading. Now we want to explain why we use because as our hook, the thing that hooks to the independent clause, and now this is our dependent clause. Why? Just say why? Because her dog started barking. So we're explaining the reason that she stopped reading. It's giving us more detail. It's making the whole thing more clear. We don't have to make a whole other sentence just so that we can say this one small thing, maybe adding it to the sentence is better, could we say because her dogs started barking, Alice stopped reading. Yes, we can, but don't forget to use the comma. Can we do the same thing for this one? Can we say because her dog started barking, Alice stopped reading. Yes, absolutely. You can start with because that's a very interesting way to start a sentence. Make sure that you use a comma because her dogs started barking comma and of course because should be capitalized because it's the beginning of the sentence now, because her dogs started barking, Alice stopped reading interesting sentence. Now the last one is a little different, but it should be very familiar to you. Alice found her shoes comma, which were under the bed. Now, this is actually called a relative clause. We use relative clauses also to add information, except they start with often, which or who, or that. They can start with other words as well. We use these in the same exact way that we use dependent clauses. And we still can call them dependent clauses because if we just say which were under the bed, it doesn't make sense. It's not a complete thought. It needs to be connected to something else because by itself, it just doesn't make sense. Now, can we do the same thing for this one, which were under the bed? Can we say which were under the bed? Alice found her shoes. No, no, we can't do that. So for this type we can reverse the order. And for this type, we cannot reverse the order because we don't know what we're talking about because the Witch and the thing after it are a detail of shoes were connecting it to a noun, as we talked about earlier in the course, it has to be connected to a thing that we've already mentioned, in this case, shoes. But it's really the same basic idea. Now you might be thinking, wait, where is the subject here? Well, which replaces the subject. We know what the subject is, the subject is shoes. So if we were going to make two sentences, that would be Alice found her shoes, her shoes were under the bed. Her shoes would be the subject of this one, which would be by itself, an independent clause could be a sentence by itself. But because we don't want to say the subject again, we use this. If we said two sentences, that would be probably Alice found her shoes, period, new sentence. They were under the bed than they would be our subject. The shoes, right? That would be okay. Don't wanna do that. I want to I want to take this and stick it into this. So when I say this, what I'm really saying is her shoes were under the bed when we replace it with which it doesn't stand by itself as a complete thought which were under the bed. What are you talking about? By itself? It's not an independent clause. It is a relative clause that we can think of in the same way as the regular dependent clause. Pretty much the same idea. 31. Prepositional Phrases: Part 1: The reason we talked about dependent clauses and independent clauses first is that once we understand that, it's pretty easy to pick up other kinds of things that can add detail to a sentence or make it longer. What we're going to talk about now is another really common way to do that. And that is a prepositional phrase. Now I don't want you to get scared of words like prepositional phrase. I really don't want to frighten you. It's not scary. In fact, if you don't remember prepositional phrase, that's fine. I don't care if you remember any of the grammar words in this course. Really a care that you know how to use these things. So focus on the usage here. This is actually very similar to the dependent clause. The difference is it's not a clause. Remember, dependent clauses and independent clauses need to have the subject and the verb. Or if the subject is not there, at least it, in a way has to be there, right? Same with relative clauses. Prepositional phrases. They're phrases, meaning they're groups of words that don't have necessarily those pieces. They don't necessarily, they don't have to have the verb and the subject or the verb related to the subject. So because of that, we call them phrases. They're not clauses. There phrase is, a phrase is just a group of words. Now a prepositional phrase, don't be scared of this is simply a preposition. And the thing that the preposition is about, what is that preposition about? We say the object of the preposition. Preposition just as a reminder, words like on words like for words like from words like beside, words like across. There are so many prepositions. So we use prepositional phrases, just like we use dependent clauses, except they're not dependent clauses. There prepositional phrases. Other than that, they're pretty much the same. So what you do is make a little phrase starting with a preposition, like after, and then say something that that preposition is about, like spending a year in Tibet. And then connect that to the independent clause, like we just talked about. So this is pretty simple. After spending a year in Tibet, Alice was ready to go home. Alice was ready to go home. That is a sentence by itself or could be. And we can say that it is an independent clause. This part doesn't have the subject, so we can say that it is a prepositional phrase. Now, I'm going to mention something about that in just a second, but let's, let's make sure we understand this first. So we have this thing which gives more detail. Does it stand by itself after spending a year in Tibet? No, it does not stand by itself. So it is dependent. In that sense. It can't go by itself. It needs the other piece it needs, in this case, the independent clause. And the question you may be asking is, can I reverse that just like we did for the independent clauses this way or this way. And the answer is yes. Sometimes it sounds a little weird to do it one way or the other way. Just because of common usage, most people don't say it like that. You just have to get a feeling for that over time. But generally, yes, often the prepositional phrase starts the sentence and then we say the independent clause, but it's also common to put it the other way. Now, notice for this one, I have the comma here, followed by Alice was ready to go home, just like the dependent clauses. So it really is kind of the same thing, although it's called something else. We can't get stuck on names too much. If we get stuck on this is called this and that is called that sometimes we can get more confused. So in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways, prepositional phrases, dependent clauses, they're the same, they're the same thing really. I'm going to give you a perfect example to show you that. Let's reverse this. Alice was ready to go home after spending a year in Tibet. Is that okay? Yes. Do we need the comma? No. Does that remind you of anything we talked about? Remember the example that I mentioned before? Alice bought coffee after she got off work. So because I said she got off work, she got allows us to say, Aha, it is a dependent clause because it has a she and it has got, it has the verb and the subject. But then I wrote above it, getting off work after getting off work, which technically makes that a prepositional phrase. So we could say, oh yes, those are different now because you change that to getting now it's different. Well, kind of, but also Getting still implies that it's Xi. And does it really matter? It's working in the same way. So changing this one, we could make it then a dependent clause after she spent a year in Tibet. Okay, now it's, now it's a dependent clause. So they're so close. Alice was ready to go home after she spent a year in Tibet. I think it sounds better to say Alice was ready to go home after spending a year in Tibet. But really, there isn't much difference between those two. What about the next one? With a sigh? With a sigh? This is the thing that the width is about the object of the preposition with that thing, a good way to think of the object after the preposition is to replace the whole thing with that, with that after that. So it's a good way to think of it. It makes it I think, easier. With a sigh, Alice began packing her bags. Alice began packing her bags. Complete sentence, independent clause. Alice began packing their bags with a sigh. Fine. No comma for that one. Okay. This is good. I hope you're getting the feel for this. Beside the small wooden desk. Alice gazed out the window. Alice gazed out the window. Independent clause beside the small wooden desk. Is that a sentence by itself? No. Does it start with a preposition? Yes. So it is a prepositional phrase, but who cares what it's called? It doesn't matter. And again, if we want to simplify this to see if it works as a prepositional phrase, we can just say, beside that, Alice gazed out the window. That's a little weird, but it would be kind of correct. It helps us to at least see how the prepositional phrase works. It's not that complicated, It's pretty simple. 32. Prepositional Phrases: Part 2: Now this first one is really interesting. We can play around with this one a lot. Alice sat with her book by the fire. With her book prepositional phrase, yes, with it by the fire. Prepositional phrase, buy it with it. Buy it with it, by it. So if we wanted to say that we're attaching by the fire to Alice sat with her book, then that's fine. But if we also wanted to say it, we could say Alice sat by the fire and then connect with her book. So you could flip them around. It doesn't really matter. Now what about putting those before with the comma, could we say with her book, Alice sat by the fire. Yeah, we could do that. That's correct. But I think would be more natural because we want to connect this one in this case, by the fire. Alice sat with her book. You could say that. It sounds slightly odd to me. I probably wouldn't say it like that. I would probably say Alice sat with her book by the fire. But you could if you wanted to. So there's a lot to play around with. Just remember if we say by the fire, Alice sat with her book. Sounds like literature. Make sure there's a comma there by the fire comma. Alice sat with her book. The next one, Alice waited for a response from her manager. From, in this case, it doesn't quite make sense because it's a person. So let's say with her, with him, we could replace it with a different pronoun because it's a person. Same idea though. Alice waited for our response are independent clause. That's what she's doing. Alice, this is a sentence by itself. Alice waited for a response. We can make a sentence out of that, like that from her manager gives us more detail. Could we say from her manager, Alice waited for a response? Grammatically, it's correct, but it's very weird to me to say it like that from her manager. Alice waited for a response, just sounds a bit odd. Logically, it doesn't quite make sense to me. And that's more of a common use thing. You just have to get a feel for which one sounds a bit odd, which ones don't. Sometimes it will almost always be said one way or almost always be set at the other way. E.g. I think this one would be much more common than saying Alice was ready to go home after spending a year in Tibet. Because this is the context. This gives context to the thing we say after. This doesn't really give useful context for this action. If we say it before, it really only makes sense. After we say what she's doing, then we get added context. And this is more of a detail that follows logically from this part. Okay, last one. Alice, listen to Bach on the old record player on that. Could we say on that? Yes, we could say on that. Could we say on the old record player, Alice listened to buck? Yeah, that'll be okay. I probably wouldn't use that one. Sounds a little odd to me. It's correct. It's acceptable on the old record player capital 0. Remember to capitalize like we do with these, if that's first comma. Alice, listen to Bach, maybe we're focusing on the record player. We want to talk about that first. Yeah. It's okay. It's okay. This is one of those things where you really have to over time, especially as you read, as you read more, just get a sense for which one sounds a little more natural, which one might be more common. Now, even though we've talked about some boring, complicated grammar words. And I'm sorry for that. Now I hope this idea is clear. How we add pieces or units of sentences to other pieces or units of sentences. How we add dependent clauses, two independent clauses, relative clauses, two independent clauses, and prepositional phrases. Two independent clauses. Keep in mind that just because two things are called, two different things, doesn't mean that they are that different. We've seen how closely related prepositional phrases are. Two dependent clauses. They work in pretty much the same way. So we can use them in pretty much the same way. And the differences between them are really just in the details. Okay, now we're going to do one last thing. We're going to look at three examples with increasing length so that you can see how we can build out longer sentences in the real-world. 33. Simple, Intermediate, and Advanced Sentence Building: Now let's just for fun and play around with the things we've been talking about. Pay attention in these three examples to how relative clauses are used, to how prepositional phrases are used, and to how dependent clauses are used, and how we build out sentences to make them longer. This is an exercise you can do. You take a simple sentence from a book you're reading. Use what you're reading as your source of discovery for new sentences as we've talked about. Take that simple sentence and see if you can add to it. Forget about the original paragraph that you've found it in. See if you can add a few things to it using what we've talked about and earlier in the course, maybe adding some adjectives, maybe adding some interesting verbs, changing it a little bit. Play around with it. Try one version that's maybe medium length or intermediate length, and then another one which is really long. See how complicated you can make it. Not to say that you should always make long complicated sentences. But if you know how, that's good. Because if you know how, then you can use that when you need to. Just for fun. Let's read through my three sentences and then I want you to try this yourself, okay, First one, simple sentence, The Great Wall challenges visitors to consider the past. If you look at this, that is independent clause, The Great Wall challenges visitors than we have to consider the past intermediate with its long history. The Great Wall challenges more inquisitive visitors to consider China's enchanting past. So I've added some interesting adjectives and chanting. Inquisitive, long history. I've set a prepositional phrase at the beginning to make it a little bit more interesting with its long history that adds a bit more context, a bit more detail, makes it a bit more interesting, I think. And then the advanced one, again, just for fun. This is a kind of crazy long sentence and I'm not recommending you do this often. This took me about 20 min to write, since it's pretty, pretty complicated. So that's what I mean when I say craft. I was sitting there drinking coffee, really crafting this long sentence. And I was doing it just as an exercise to show you. Do it as an exercise. That doesn't mean you should always write ridiculously long sentences like this. Okay, so advanced with it's impossible length and ancient legacy. The Great Wall, which was completed in the seventh century, challenges even the most athletic visitors as they trek from one watch tower to the next, and encourages travelers, both young and old, to consider China's enchanting past. Notice here we have the relative clause that which they are to add detail. We have more adjectives. We now have a super long prepositional phrase, this whole thing with it's impossible length and ancient history, that whole piece there, we could replace with that, that whole thing is a prepositional phrase. Then we have our subject, the Great Wall. The Great Wall is the subject of the sentence. Then immediately after that, we throw in a relative clause. This is a type that has a comma on both sides. Very important challenges, even the most athletic visitors as they trek from one watch tower to the next. So as they trek from one watch tower to the next, all that is is a dependent clause. They, they are the visitors. They trek. That's a dependent clause. What is it being added to? It's being added to the independent clause. What would the independent clause be? The Great Wall challenges even the most athletic visitors. We can take out the which part we can remove that and we can see, Oh, that's just a regular independent clause. The Great Wall challenges even the most athletic visitors being independent clause sentence by itself. So it's not as complicated as it looks. It looks complicated at first. But then when you really explore it, you realize, oh, let's just made up of pieces. What are the pieces? Well, this as part the, As tells us, Oh hey, dependent clause. As they trek from one watch tower to the next, doesn't go by itself. You couldn't say that by itself. But it is a dependent clause. It has the subject and it has the verb, but we want to continue. So now we use an end. We can use an n if we really want to continue it. If we really want to stretch it, then we use an end and encourages travelers both young and old to consider China's enchanting past. This is just an extension piece. We could take it out, we could put it back. It's just a way to add a little bit more detail because I want to make this sentence really, really rich, really, really interesting. Now normally if I were writing this, I would probably start a new sentence there. But I was challenging myself to make this all one big sentence just so you could see. So I hope all of this is clear. I hope it's clear how we use these building blocks to improve our syntax, to build longer sentences when we need to. The only way to really get a feeling for this is to practice. So my challenge to you is, as I said, find a shorter sentence from something you're reading. Then do two more steps. Take it out, make a slightly longer version, add some pieces, add some dependent clauses, add some adjectives, add some prepositional phrases, or one or two. Then go another step, get crazy. See how much you can add and still have it. Make sense. Still have it be clear, still have it. Be vivid. I know it's a big challenge, but if you work at it, if you crafted, if you play with it, you're going to get better at it. So good luck with that, and I will see you in the next lesson. 34. Short sentences pack a punch!: Now that we've talked about building longer sentences when we should use those, and how we can actually make longer sentences. It's time to go on and talk about short sentences. So why do we need short sentences? Well, of course, in general, using short sentences with longer sentences makes your syntax better, which makes your writing or can make your writing more interesting. But is there any advantage in a short sentence itself over a longer sentence? Well, I would say yes. I would say yes. Generally speaking, short sentences can allow you to have impact, whereas you have to think through a longer sentence. I'm sure it can be impactful and very interesting, and that's great. A short sentence often really has impact when you see it, you think, very clear, I'll remember that. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. So after I make a statement, I say this short sentence, I'm not kidding. That has impact and you wake up and remember what I'm talking about. Short sentences can allow you to write with more impact. I'm not kidding. Boom, impact. There it is. Sometimes, can it be good to use one word as a sentence, either as the answer to a question or maybe to emphasize something, right? Right. So don't use that too much, but know when to use it. What does this really mean? It really means that's right, That is right. But often we can just imply that that is and say, Right, Yes, Good, That sort of thing. And it adds impact. It's very simple. It focuses people's attention, right? Yes. But don't use it too much. You gotta be careful. You have to be careful not to use it too much. Short sentences can also help you summarize an idea you may have or maybe give a final feeling or thought to conclude something. So you've explained something and you want to just give a simple, simple feeling, a simple thought to end it. Or perhaps to summarize it in a way, or maybe summarize the tone of it or the effect that we hope this thing that we've written has its useful. So there's another one. I'm summarizing the whole thing. What I just said is useful. And so instead of just saying what I just said at the end, I say, it's useful. And that can again kind of focus your reader's attention, make them pay attention, and give them a short little summary of the main points of what you just said. Not really the meaning, but the overall impression. The thing I just said is useful. So sometimes maybe I should say it's useful or it's great, or it was fantastic. I hated it. It was not fun. These sorts of short statements wrap up your ideas. It can give what you just said in the previous few sentences a sense of completeness, a sense of conclusion. Kind of like wrapping it up in a little bow before moving on to the next thing. It's useful. Just remember, don't let too many short sentences together kill your syntax. We looked at that example that was all short sentences. That was very difficult to read. It's very distracting, hard to focus. It's not fun to read all short sentences or too many, too close together. Remember, you're an artist. Each thing that you learn in this course is just one of the tools in your tool belt that you can use. But you have to choose when to use it. Just one of the brushes in your set of brushes. You have to choose when is the right time to use it. Remember that? Remember that. And I would say, before we get to some examples of using short sentences, naturally, always ask yourself, why did I write it this way? Why did I choose this short sentence instead of a longer one? Why didn't I combine it into a longer one? Why have I done it this way? What is my reason? And asking yourself that question allows you to constantly be thinking about how you shape your ideas when you're writing. And just asking that question can improve your syntax and the structure of your writing. Because you have to then honestly answer yourself. Oh, I don't know why I did that. I guess there's no point. I don't really understand why I did it and when I read it, I guess it doesn't sound very, very good. Not very interesting, so I'll change it. Okay. So the answer to your question led you to progress, led you to make a change that made it better. Great. So ask yourself the question every time. It's a must. So hopefully now you're also starting to get a feeling for when we might use short sentences. I'm trying to incorporate them in my explanation of short sentences, but that's it, That's the end. Now we're going to look at some examples. So let's do that. 35. Short Sentences at the End: Let's now look at an example of using short sentences, two short sentences at the end of an explanation. Now remember we do this probably to provide a concluding feeling to wrap up the explanation so that it feels complete to give a final impression to the reader before they move on to the next thing. This can be a great use of short sentences. So let's look at this paragraph. For awhile. I was addicted to watching the news, which I know is an extremely unhealthy habit, by the way, nice use of the relative clause right there. It got so bad. I eventually had to cancel my cable subscription and write sticky notes all over my house, reminding me not to look at anything news related. So up to this point, we have the background information, we have the problem, a description of the problem. And also the thing that we tried to do to improve the problem. Here's what we tried. We tried to canceling the cable subscription, canceling your premium subscription for TV and news and sticky notes. Now, we want to simply say that yes, it did work. They were effective. The sticky notes and canceling the cable subscription. These worked. So should we say, and they worked, including them in this sentence e.g. or which worked or something like that? Or should we stop and say clear sentence to say the result? I think it's a lot better to do the second one, to stop right at the end and then say the result very clearly in a sentence, and then say it in a different way in another sentence. Two clear sentences wraps up this explanation very neatly so that we can then go on to the next thing. Luckily, it worked. What worked? All of this. It worked. That's what worked. What happened? I kicked the habit. Now we might say, well, isn't that a little bit redundant to say it worked? I kick the habit. You could say that, but these are focusing on different things. This is focusing on the things that I tried being successful. The things that I tried successfully helped me get rid of my news addiction. Okay. Then I'm just going to say just to be very, very clear exactly what I'm talking about again, even though I did say it already, I was addicted to the news. But this is focusing not on the things that I tried, but on the thing I accomplished. So this is about the things I tried and this is about the thing I accomplished. So yes, they do cover the same general territory, but I think side-by-side, they're really, really effective. And I think this is a great way to end this explanation. Now let's look at another example. 36. Making an Impact with Short Sentences: Let's look at one more short sentences. Example. This one about how we can use short sentences for impact. Remember, impact means we want people to really remember what they just read. We want it to sort of make people pay attention. After they've been reading for a little while. You say a short clear sentence, and it makes people focus or wake up. It's a really great way to mix up your syntax as well. Sometimes it's great to have a long sentence that explains how you feel, e.g. but sometimes just saying this is how I feel. Boom. It's like punching someone in the nose a little bit. Okay, got it. That's very clear. So like we have in this first sentence, That's what we're doing. I'm exhausted. Boom, that's very impactful. Now I know what we're going to be talking about next. So this is a great way to start an explanation. It starts it with a very clear picture or a very clear state or condition. Whoever this is, this person is very tired and now I'm going to hear more details about that. I'm exhausted. But it doesn't have to be right at the beginning. That's not really the point here. I think we could put this part first last week I worked until midnight, blah, blah, blah, and then say, I'm exhausted. And that would wrap up the idea and also have impacts. So the point here is that the short sentences just giving some focus, some clarity and some needed simplicity within a slightly more complicated explanation. I'm exhausted. Last week, I worked until midnight from Monday to Thursday. The week before that, I slept under my desk twice. I'm exhausted, so we can put it right there if we want it to. My boss has been pushing the whole team so hard since we're running behind schedule and our deadline is only three weeks away, I need a vacation. So this adds some impact to this feeling of tiredness. I want to explain how tired I am, how my boss is pushing me too much, but I also want you to feel it. So I'm going to tell you very simply how I feel and what I want. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. That could be at the beginning, it could be at the end, it could be in the middle, wherever here. And I need a vacation also could be wherever you could put. I need a vacation right after this sentence and the week before that, I slept under my desk twice. I need a vacation. You could put that there too. So for this one, I don t think it matters so much where we put short sentences. We could add another short sentence if we really wanted to. It might be a little too much. It depends on which short sentence it was, but regardless of where we put them, we can consider what this explanation would be without these short sentences. So let's take this out. And let's take this out and see if it's better or worse. Last week I worked until midnight from Monday to Thursday. And the week before that I slept under my desk twice. My boss has been pushing the whole team so hard since we are running behind schedule and our deadline is only three weeks away. So I understand that. It's fine. Great. But I have to come to my own conclusion about that. Maybe you're a workaholic and you love working and this is great for you and you feel energized by this crazy work schedule. Maybe that's you. I don't know. I don't know how you feel about it. So I have to come to my own conclusions. And to be honest, this description because it's just a description of you recently and what you've been doing related to your work. It's kind of forgettable. And that's really the thing we want our writing to be memorable. So what can you do to make it more memorable? Short sentences, more memorable, more impact? This, I think adds so much. And I think this adds so much. It makes it more human. It makes it easier to remember. It allows us to empathize with this person because we have now an understanding of how they feel about this description, rather than just trying to guess, we have a bit of context. The context is a filter to help understand this description. And so it feels a lot more complete in this way. And yes, we could include that meaning of I'm exhausted and I need a vacation into these longer sentences. Yes. But as long as we're going to do that, to include these things, why not? For the sake of syntax and for the sake of making sure you get it. You understand and you remember what I said? Why not make these little punches in the nose? Hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm exhausted. Now let me tell you about it. Hey, I need a vacation. Now let me tell you about it. So that's really the power of short sentences. In addition to being a nice little bow that wraps up your ideas at the end of an explanation and gives you a final feeling of final impression, a final thought or something to summarize what we've said, perhaps the end result. Hopefully this makes sense. Obviously I'm going to say that you need to practice this now. You're probably used to this by now. So take a paragraph from something that you're reading or something that you've written in the past. Have you made good use of short sentences? Write it down, and then see if you can add one or two short sentences to improve it, e.g. to give it more impact, play around with that. Try different ones and see the effect that those different ones may have on the feeling of the whole paragraph. Practice that play with it. If you have any questions, let me know. I will see you in the next lesson. 37. Punctuation Overview: We've talked about now long sentences, short sentences, and how these are different aspects of good syntax. But what about punctuation? Does it matter? Yes, it matters a lot. So we're going to spend some time on punctuation because it really is important. Some aspects of punctuation are very easy, very simple to get. And some are a little bit more complicated. Especially when it comes to building out those longer sentences we talked about. When you have a longer sentence, making sure you have the correct punctuation is really important. Otherwise, you could confuse someone. Before we get into commas, let's just review a couple of big picture basics that we talked about earlier in the course. Then, then we'll get into using commas. Remember, when you use punctuation, particularly period, comma, colon, semicolon, an exclamation mark, a question mark. Now this doesn't include things like a hyphen that's a little bit different. But this kind of mark, when you're using these, generally, you want to have no space before, one space after. Now, many of you are going to be saying to yourself, yeah, I know that's obvious. You would be shocked. I know I mentioned this before too, but you would be shocked. How often I see a student's writing that just has this basic mistake. And this is an email that you want to send to a colleague or a, for a job interview. And you want people to take you seriously. Really, they won't. If your sentences don't begin with a capital letter. If you don't have a space before the punctuation, if you don't have one space after the punctuation, these simple things, very simple. Three things. This, this and this. If you're not doing these, it shows other people that you're not really serious and you're not careful. Do want people to have that impression. Remember, your writing is the way that you let other people know what kind of person you are and how you think, right? So do you want them to think, Oh, lazy person, I don't know. I can't I can't read this in an e-mail. Do you want them to think that? Probably not. So just commit yourself at least to these basics, very simple things, not that difficult to do. And then I would suggest also remembering the general rules of punctuation. There's some flexibility there. People use punctuation in different ways, but just try to remember the general rules and generally use correct pronunciation so that you're not misunderstood. You don't want to be misunderstood, right? Right. And also, you can use basic software. There are many programs, many of which are free for checking grammar, and those will also check your punctuation. They will let you know if you've made a small mistake where they will make a recommendation, I often use grammarly that one's pretty popular right now, but it doesn't really matter as long as you have one that can find things that you may not notice and you can compose e.g. your emails there in that application or in that software that will allow you to make changes and notice things that you may not have otherwise noticed as you're writing. Now it's also important to remember that the software doesn't know what you want to say. So you have to be the boss and you're using it as a way to catch things that you may have missed. But if you decide, hey, actually I want to say it this way. The editing software thinks I'm using passive voice in a weird way. I've decided I want to use passive voice here because I think it has this kind of effect. So do that. Don't say, Oh, I can't use passive voice here because this grammar software doesn't want me to know. You're in charge, you're in charge. Use it as a tool. And I know I've mentioned this before, but I just wanted to cover that before we get into a little bit more depth. 38. Connecting Independent Clauses with Commas: Remember our discussion of independent clauses when we were talking about building longer sentences. You'll need to remember that now. Because we're going to talk about when we use commas, when we have independent clauses. When you put independent clauses together, you have something called a compound sentence. It's not extremely important to remember that. Now remember, an independent clause has The subject and a verb about the subject. And remember it is also a complete thought. Remember that? So it's a complete thought. It's got a subject and a verb about the subject, also known as the predicate, that should be review. Okay? Now, remember that can be a sentence by itself or it can be part of a larger sentence. We might take a dependent clause or a phrase, e.g. a prepositional phrase. Remember these things. We might take these and add them to an independent clause. But what if we have two independent clauses? Then what should we do? And that means each of these parts could be a sentence by itself. How should we use commas in this case? Should we use commas in this case? Can we use them however we want to know? No, we can't. So there are some general rules for this. Let's take this first sentence. She said she needed a favor. Is that a sentence by itself? She said she needed a favor. Yes. Yes, it is. I helped her. Yes, it is. It is. Now we have this thing here. This thing, if you're curious, what it's called is a conjunction. And there are different types of conjunctions. There's one that's called a coordinating conjunction. We have two independent clauses and you put them together with something like so. And then it makes a compound sentence. Then you have another type of conjunction called a subordinating conjunction, and that one connects independent clause to dependent clauses. Anyway, let's not, let's not focus on that too much now. But let's say, let's say these types of conjunctions here. These types of words include and, or, but, yet, So, NOR and also for. But I think that's a little confusing. So let's, let's leave that one out. These are words that can link together two independent clauses. Now, if you have two independent clauses like this, and you want to stick them together into one sentence. You should use one of these. And if you use one of these, then you need to use a comma. Where does the Camargo right there, right in front of that, right in front of this, this thing called a coordinating conjunction. So that's pretty simple. Now what if I want to just remove it? Can I do that? Can I say she said she needed a favor? Comma I helped her. Is that correct? No. That is incorrect. That is something called a comma splice. That is called a comma splice. And I don't think it's super important to remember that. That's fine. If you don't, it doesn't really matter. Just remember this. If you've got the two independent clauses, that means the two things that can be sentences by themselves. And you've decided to stick them together into one sentence. And you use one of these words to connect them together. You should use a comma to stick them together. So it's comma. And then one of these, and then the next independent clause. Okay. Now can I just make two sentences? Can I say she said she needed a favor, period. I helped her. Yeah. Yeah. You can that's totally fine. You can do that. But maybe you don't want to maybe you don't want a sentence as short as I helped her. Maybe not. So for the sake of syntax, and that's why we're talking about punctuation along with syntax. For the sake of syntax, you have to know this stuff so that you can decide, should I put them together into one sentence or not? Now, let's look at this other compound sentence here. Well, is it a compound sentence? I see eight people here. There are only six cups. Are these two sentences by themselves? Could they be? Yes? Yes, yes. So they are what is our coordinating conjunction? Oh, well, there it is. But, but why are we using? But because this kind of thing is in a way against this, this would require eight cups. We have six cups. Oh, there's something negative or going against what I've said before we use, but, okay, now I want to put them together because these two ideas fit together, it would be a little bit weird to make these two separate sentences. These ideas are connected, they're linked together. So I almost have to put them together. I don't have to, but it's definitely more clear to put them together. I see eight people here, but that's much more powerful than I see eight people here. There are only six cups. The bots helps to make the connection of, hey, there's an issue, there's a problem. We need two more cups. Okay. Anyway, just remember this comma placement here, okay? It's pretty simple. I've got this word. It's included in this group here. This word is included in this group here. And that is why we're using a comma in front of it. I called twice sentence by itself. Yes. I call it twice. You didn't answer sentence by itself. Yes. Okay. Comma and then, but think of more examples like this. Try and, and one, try and, or one try to think of some examples. Make a few, practice this a little bit. It's not that hard. Now that you know it. If you already knew it, that's great. But practice it a little bit because you don't want to have to be looking up rules when you're writing an email or writing something. You wanna be just writing. It comes to you naturally. So in order to get there, you have to practice it. Make two examples per conjunction. Try to make two with yet to with. So too with nor to width and two with or two with but try to use all of these, make two examples for each one. And if you need inspiration, look online, read an article, find some more examples. It's okay to look at more examples. That's great. Look at a couple of examples and then try it yourself. Now, let's talk about using commas for relative clauses. 39. Commas for Relative Clauses: Relative clauses by now should be very familiar to you. We talked about them when we were focusing on dependent clauses, when we were talking about building longer sentences. And we talked about them earlier in the course. But let's focus on using commas with these relative clauses because it can be a little bit tricky. I'm going to try to make it as simple as possible. We're going to try to avoid too many grammar words because that doesn't always help. Sometimes it causes more confusion. I think that a lot of the time, more grammar words adds difficulty and complexity rather than making things more clear. So let's look at these sentences and explore the use of commas. My sister is moving to Vancouver, which is a pretty nice city. Okay, now what are we doing here? Well, here we're adding some information about a specific noun. And this is the last thing that's mentioned, the last noun. So it's right up against it. It's right beside it. So we're not talking about my sister here. We're adding details about Vancouver. So how do we do this with commas? Now we're using, which because this is a place. If we say a person here, that would be weird because you can't move to a person, right? But if you had a person at the end, then you would say who, of course, after the comma, you put the comma right after the thing you want to add information about. That's it. You add a comma right after. The thing you want to add information about. This is going to be considered an independent clause. This main piece, it's a thing that can stand by itself as a sentence, My sister is moving to Vancouver. Boom. That's a sentence which is a pretty nice city by itself, is not a sentence. But what is really happening here is that which is replacing Vancouver. So yes, it is a dependent clause, but it's called a relative clause because it's a little different than just any dependent clause. Remember, we can move many dependent clauses in front. We can switch around the order. We talked about that for these, we cannot, this pronoun here, relative pronoun is what this is called, is replacing just this. So you could make two sentences. You could say, My sister is moving to Vancouver. Vancouver is a pretty nice city. And that would be correct. But what's the problem there? Vancouver is a pretty nice city after I just said Vancouver. So saying Vancouver that close, we want to avoid that. Let's make this one sentence. So we remove the Vancouver from this sentence. We replace it with which because Vancouver is a thing, not a person. And then we put the comma in the place that the period would be if this were a sentence by itself. So that is this type, that is this type. And it's important to remember that you can't switch these around. Like other types of dependent clauses you can't say, which is a pretty nice city. My sister is moving to Vancouver, doesn't make sense. It's wrong, incorrect. It has to be. My sister is moving to Vancouver, which is a pretty nice city. It's gotta be in that Order. And this is for usually which and who. Sometimes we use when, where, and some others as well, but it's the same basic idea. Now the next one is a slightly different type. And for that reason, we're using commas in a slightly different way. But the basic idea is the same. The basic idea is we're adding information to a thing, to a noun. This noun is the person, Dr. Jeffries. Except notice that Dr. Jeffries is not at the end of the sentence like this one is. Instead, we're shoving the information in to the middle of the sentence. Okay. So let's simplify this by making two separate sentences. Dr. Jeffries is away on vacation. That's a sentence by itself, right? Good. Dr. Jeffries lives next door. That's a sentence by itself. Okay. Alright. So we have two separate sentences and that's okay. But I don't want to say Dr. Jeffries twice, just like this one. I don't want to say Vancouver twice. So I don't want to say Dr. Jeffries lives next door. Dr. Jeffries is away on vacation. That sounds very strange. Bad syntax, awkward, repetition. So many problems here. So I want to combine these two together into one sentence. But how do I do this without putting Dr. Jeffries at the end, like this one? Well, it's pretty simple. After you say the subject or the thing you want to add information about, it doesn't have to be at the beginning of the sentence. When you want to insert that information, you're just going to use two commas and then place that information with a relative pronoun in there in front of the other thing. Maybe that's a little confusing. So let's take the sentence. Dr. Jeffries lives next door. This is our sentence. Dr. Jeffries lives next door. That's the sentence. Remove Dr. Jeffries. Replace that with h2 because he's a person and then stick that in-between two commas. Outside of those two commas. It's just a regular sentence. Dr. Jeffries is away on vacation. So kind of separate this out in your mind. Dr. Jeffries is away on vacation. Dr. Jeffries is away on vacation. Very clear. Okay. Now, pop this in. How do we know that it's separate? We have the two commas, Dr. Jeffries, comma, WHO person lives next door? Comma is away on vacation, so we don't change this part around. This part stays the same. This part stays the same. And the grammar of this part basically stays the same two, because we could say, oh yeah, but that's Dr. Jeffries lives next door. That's also it could be a sentence. So in a way it's not that complicated, but just remember we have the two commas there because that helps us to separate it out. Now, what if it's a thing? What if it's vancouver? Vancouver is a pretty nice city. Vancouver is my sister's home. Vancouver comma, which is my sister's home. Comma is a pretty nice city. Now that's a little awkward, but that would be correct grammatically. That would be the right way to do it. Okay, Then we just have a comma here at the end to say, I think often when we want to add a little comment like this, we have a pause. We use a comma for a pause. And then we say that it's just an opinion and we say in my opinion or as I see it or something like that. So this could be removed or left. We're just emphasizing that it is an opinion. Now, before we look at the last sentence, which you'll notice has no commas. Very interesting. Before we do that, you might be asking yourself a question. Hey, if I can make these as two separate sentences, can I just switch them around? Could I say e.g. Dr. Jeffries, comma who is away on vacation. Comma lives next door. Instead of saying it this way, could I do that? And the answer is yes. Yes. Yes. They're both correct. So you can switch these around because both things are about Dr. Jeffries. Or if we put Vancouver here, both things are about Vancouver. And whichever one you choose as the complete sentence just contains the other thing. And if you switch it around, it's probably not going to make much difference. Remember, you still have to have both commas. Now one might sound more natural than another, but usually, usually it's okay. I think this one is better. This way, Dr. Jeffries, who lives next door because this is the general rule because the only reason I say this is to mention that he's on vacation. I'm not telling you this, so I can tell you who lives next door. That's not why I'm mentioning it. I mentioning it so that I can let you know this, this is my main idea. This is my purpose for saying the sentence. So that's usually going to be this part. Dr. Jeffries is away on vacation. Then the piece that I put in here is usually going to be just context. Think of it as kind of bonus, bonus information, extra details, stuff you may really not need to know, but it's just there because I want to give you a bit more context. So usually that's how we do it. We choose the main one based on what we're really going to say. Okay, now, what about this last one? Why doesn't it have a comma? And why are we using that here? I'm confused. Isn't it the same as this one? The shoes comma that you bought me for Christmas? Comma or stolen? No. No. What's the difference? The difference is and by the way, we usually use for these that or who and not which. For these. The difference is we need this part in order for this to make any sense. Because if I just say the shoes were stolen, the shoes were stolen. Yes. That is a complete sentence. But I'm not sure which shoes you're talking about. I need more information so that I can mentally identify that. So in a way, this information that you bought me for Christmas, which choose the ones you bought me for Christmas. This is necessary this is necessary information for me to completely understand what is going on in order to be able to identify which thing you're talking about. And if it's a person, that's also true. If I say e.g. the old lady, the old lady. And if I just complete the sentence like this, the old lady is over there, we would say, Okay, well, that's a complete sentence. And I understand. But if I didn't mention anything before, I didn't tell you which old lady you might be thinking. Which old lady or you're talking about. But if I use the relative clause to identify the old lady, then it's going to make sense. Okay. So the old lady who because it's a person who sold us that. What does she have? Boats? The old lady who sold us that boat is over there. The old lady who sold us that boat is over there. Because if I just say the old lady is over there, your left thinking, Oh lady, which old lady? What are you talking about? What? 0 the 0 the old lady who sold us the boat is over. Okay. I don't know why this old lady has a boat, but anyway, that's the idea. But for this one, and for this one, the information added is kind of bonus, unnecessary, not really needed. I know who you're talking about. I've named this person. It's Dr. Jeffries. So you don't need this part to know who it is, who is it? It's Dr. Jeffries. But if it's the old lady than I don't know who it is. I don't know which old lady. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. I need this part. When you use this type, again, usually it's going to be who in that and we don't use which for these. If you use this type, you don't need a comma. So for these two, yes, you need a comma. Need a comma at the end after the noun, you're going to add information about. Need a comma at the end after the noun you're going to add information about. And for this one, after you've finished with your relative clause, before you say or write the rest of the sentence. For this one, you don't need it because you are identifying, because it's necessary for you to identify the person using the relative clause. It's not just, by the way, information, it's not just bonus information. So I hope this is clear, but of course, you need to practice it. So like we talked about before, two sentences per type. Two for this one too, for this one too, for this one. Practice. Do more than two to three to four. The more you practice, the better you get. Let's look at now another way to use commas to add information in a sentence. 40. Commas for Adding Information: There's another way to add bonus information about something in a sentence, which looks like one of the relative clauses that we talked about, but it's a bit, it's a bit different. We're just adding phrases or let's say thoughts that pop up in the mind. A little groups of words, one word, some thing that comes up in our mind about that thing that we just mentioned in the sentence that we want to add. Well, how do we do that? What's the best way to do it? Remember we talked about the Dr. Dr. Jeffries comma, who lives next door. Comma is away on vacation. Remember, we're adding this. Who lives next door is bonus information about the Dr. by the way, context. We don't need it. We could remove it if we like. We can do the same thing with thoughts that we have, opinions, little comments. Let's call them comment. I'm going to call them comment phrases. Comment phrases. And this could be just a little thing about that. It could be a person, could be a thing. And it doesn't have to be a phrase, it could be one word. Look at the first example. Your car luckily didn't get hit by the tree when it fell. So if I took out this luckily part, then it would say your car didn't get hit by the tree when it fell. But it might help to add this luckily thing because that's what I'm thinking. Well, that's pretty lucky. Very close to your car. You're very lucky. I could if I wanted to make a second sentence and say, your car didn't get hit by the tree when it fell, it was very lucky. Why do I need to make a whole sentence just to say that simple thought. When I just put luckily here. Now notice how I'm doing it. I'm putting it between two commas. And that's why I mentioned the example of Dr. Jeffries. Because we're using really the same idea, the same structure. Except here we're a bit more free. Here. We don't have to follow the who or which rule here we can just say our little comment, as long as it is between the two commas. So think of this space is kind of a little, a little play area, a play area of opinions. And as long as you're between the commas, you're safe. Now, don't get crazy. Don't write a book between the two commas or something like that. But you'll see sometimes these long, these long comments between the two commas. And it's okay if you really know what you're doing. But generally speaking, you want to keep it fairly short. And you can just add this bonus information here. And then when people read that, they understand it better, it gives more color. It's a really powerful way to add color, to add some vividness to a description, to a view on something that you have. It's a good way to insert an opinion. While at the same time, it's a way to keep the main sentence or the main part of the sentence, maybe a little more clear, maybe more serious. So you can have a serious tone with something a little lighter put in there. And it's important to note that this has to be complete sentence. Your car didn't get hit by the tree when it fell. That has to be a whole sentence. And this thing must be able to be removed without affecting the meaning of the whole sentence. And it must have the commas there to protect it. It's like a little bubble independent from the sentence itself. So you can't rely on this as a way to make your sentence makes sense. It should make sense by itself. Let's look at another example here. Linda, unlike her sister, is a great conversationalist. Linda is a great conversationalist. Okay. Now have an opinion about this. I want to say that she is different from her sister. I don't want to say a whole sentence. Okay. Linda, unlike our system, sort of that feeling is a great conversationalist. Alright, very clear. So I've inserted, I've inserted my little comment, my little comment phrase in there. By the way, usually when these are used, most of the time, they're going to be at the beginning of the sentence like this, usually after the subject of the sentence. Then you add something about the subject. That's how it's most often used, as I've said before, make sure you practice these, make your own examples. Now, let's explore using commas with phrases and dependent clauses. 41. Linking Things at the Front: Me mentioning dependent clauses and phrases like prepositional phrases shouldn't frighten you because we've already talked about it. I just want to make sure we focus on how we use commas for these things. When we're building slightly longer sentences, it's very important to get the comma's right and we did talk about it before. So this is partly review. I just want to make sure it's super duper clear. Now remember, a dependent clause can't stand by itself as a sentence. A dependent clause has a subject and a verb about the subject. But unlike an independent clause, it doesn't stand by itself. And it has at the beginning another type of conjunction. And this is, as we talked about in the other lesson, kind of a, kind of a hook which grabs on to the other part in a way you can think of it that way. If that doesn't confuse you, think of it that way, if you like. So a good example would be because she needed help and this thing by itself couldn't stand as a sentence. So it's not an independent clause. So then we have to figure out how to use this hook to connect it to e.g. an independent clause. Remember, we talked about there being two ways to do that because she needed help. Then we would have to make this capital comma. Alice hired a tutor because she needed help. Alice hired a tutor. But we can reverse it. And if we reverse it, and we say the independent clause first, Alice hired a tutor because she needed help. And if we do it that way, then we don't use the comma. So if the dependent clause goes first, then we need the comma. If the independent clause goes first, followed by the dependent clause, then we need a comma. But this same idea is true for phrases, and this is why sometimes words can confuse us. 0 dependent clause, phrase, oh, they're so different. Well, not in the way that we actually build sentences. So if you have a piece like this, Let's just call this a phrase. Let's call this a phrase. You can consider this a phrase if you want to, if that helps you remember it, just consider it a phrase. It's not a complete sentence by itself. It's a group of words, and we're using it to add it to an independent clause. Okay? So we're treating this in the same way that we treat these other phrases covered from head to toe in mud. Is that a sentence by itself? Does it stand alone? No, it doesn't. It's working in exactly the same way as because she needed help. And because I start with the phrase, because I start with that thing, I need a comma there. Dexter walked into the house. Is that a complete sentence? Yes. Could we say Dexter walked into the house covered from head to toe in mud? Yes. And if we do, do we need the comma? No. And then this is lowercase. So that's fine. You can switch it around. That's totally fine. What about this one? Prepositional phrase? Remember that? Before you leave comma, please tell Joel, I need a word that means I need to talk to Joel. Could we reverse it? Notice the comma is right there in front of what would be, or what is the independent clause? What would be the sentence by itself if we reverse it and start with that, please tell Joel, I need a word before you leave. No comma. No comma there. So maybe it, maybe it helps to just remove this distinction, this separation between the dependent clause and phrases. Because once you do that, and you just say, oh yeah, those are all that kind of that kind of thing. That it's pretty easy. Then you just remember this first comma, this not first. No comma. Fairly straightforward, fairly simple. And there are some exceptions. Of course. There are some exceptions and I'll talk about one in a second. But as a general rule, okay. After midnight, comma, Dexter walked into the house. This is another prepositional phrase. Dexter walked into the house after midnight. Same thing, but if we say Dexter walked into the house after midnight, then we do not need the comma. Of course, you get it by now. By the end of the party, most of us were too drunk to move. Comma in front of the independent clause. Most of us were too drunk to move. That is a sentence by itself or can be. Most of us were too drunk to move by the end of the party and that would have no comma I think you get it by now. Now, there are exceptions, of course. What would be an example? Maybe if we started with so, so we left, right? Because if I start with so then that is going to be caused by something. So is related to cause, right? You insulted my family. So we left. As a result of you insulting my family, we left. So it makes sense then for the so we left to follow the, you insulted my family independent clause, right? One thing follows another. So for that kind of cause and effect thing, sometimes it doesn't make sense to say. So we left comma. You insulted my family. No, no, that doesn't work. That doesn't work. So there are, of course, exceptions to this. You have to be aware of those and pay attention to those. But this is a general structure and the general usage of commas for adding dependent clauses and phrases. Two independent clauses. 42. Commas for Lists: You're probably sick and tired of hearing me talk about commas. I get it. I'm sick and tired of hearing me talk about commas. But just one more thing before we move on to our next piece of punctuation. One more thing. What about the thing that most people know about commas from middle-school? When you have a list of things, what about that? Alright, this is probably, definitely review for you, but let's just, let's just make sure we talk about it so that we can say we've really covered commas. If you have two things, then they're just two things you're going to have and you're going to have or, and sometimes you might have n4. But if you just have two things, then you don't need a comma. Dennis and Emma will arrive in five-minutes. Two people could be Dennis or Emma will arrive in five-minutes. That means they're coming separately. And I don't know which one will be here in 5 min, but one of them will. Alright, so it doesn't really matter which one it is that would change the meaning, but it wouldn't change the comma requirement. No comma required. What about A-list? Well, if it's two things, I bought wine and cheese. It's just like Dennis and Emma. Now it wouldn't make sense to say, I bought wine or cheese because you bought it. So you should know, right? You could say, I might buy wine or cheese. That would be correct because you haven't done it yet. So you're deciding this one or that one, that would be okay. So again, two things. Don't need a comma. But if it's three in a list, or four, or five, or six, or seven, or however many, more than two. If it's more than two, you need to start using commas. Now there are two slightly different ways to do it. But the general rule is after each thing, you have a comma and then you have end before the last thing. Okay, so I'm bringing wine, comma, gifts, comma and cheese. Now, this comma is known as the Oxford comma. And a lot of people prefer to use the Oxford comma. That means you also put a comma in front of the end before the last thing in your list. And if this is a list of seven things and it would be I'm bringing him and who? All commas then? Comma gifts. Comma and cheese. Okay, So the quantity, the number in the list is not important. It's just before the end. But you'll also see people not put the last one, not put the last comma. And it'll be gifts and cheese, wine comma, gifts and cheese. And that's also generally considered to be, okay. Although a lot of grammar software will correct that and say No, no. You should use the Oxford comma. I use the Oxford comma. Some people don't. It's kind of a preference thing. People debate it. Some people say, you must use the Oxford comma. Some people say, Oh, relax. I say relax, whatever you prefer, whatever you feel fits what you want to say. Best. But probably stick with one, choose one way of doing it and stick with that. Again, I use the Oxford comma because most people say that's correct. So I want to be seen by most people as correct. I think it's a minority of people who don't use the Oxford comma, but that's just how I feel about it. Anyway. I hope this is clear. If any of this stuff is not clear, please just ask let me know. I'd be more than happy to answer your question. And as I've said already a couple of times, if you don't practice this, it's not going to become automatic. You want when you're writing an email, when you're writing something to just have it there, you know how to do it. You don't want to be researching things when you're writing. Practice. Make examples for all the ones we've talked about so far, because practice makes perfect. Okay, I'll see you in the next lesson. 43. How to Use Semicolons: With a clear understanding of how to use commas effectively and naturally in your writing. I hope it's now time to go on and talk about the semi-colon. So in this writing course, we're talking about for punctuation, commas, semi-colons, hyphens. Now why are we talking about these three in this course and not all types of English punctuation. Well, that's a good question. Why are we talking about the colon? Why aren't we talking about the exclamation mark, where the question mark, why are we talking about these things? Well, I think if we focused too much on punctuation, we would get a little bit far away from our focus, which is on how to write naturally and effectively how to write with clarity. So some of these other things, like these three are not going to have as much of an impact on that goal. If you know how to use a colon. That's great. There's another course I have where we focus on that because that's an email course. That course, of course needs to use a lot of colon's because Colin's are common in emails. For these two, this is to express excitements. So that's more of the emotional thing. If you want to say something with more excitement, you just add that it's not that complicated and writing a question is not about this mark. This is just a marker to say it's a question. But in fact it's more about the structure of the question, how you build it in terms of grammar. So that's more the topic of a grammar course. We're focusing on the comma and the semicolon and the hyphen. Because these are three things that are really crucial for writing clearly. These are things that can actually take your syntax to the next level, help you improve your syntax so that you can write effectively. So I just wanted to make that very clear if you have that question swimming around in your mind. Now, let's take a look at how we use the semicolon. How do we use it? Well, it's actually really simple and I think the best way to look at it and the best way to understand it is to study a few examples. So when you see this, I'd like you to tell me what you think you've learned a bit about sentence structures. We've talked a little bit about dependent and independent clauses. What makes a complete sentence? We've talked about these things. So you should have some hint as to what exactly the semicolon is doing here. Let's read through it and see if you can guess it before I say it. Okay. That's the deal. Cars shouldn't cost $1 million. People who buy them are wasting their money. Okay. Let's try this one. I go for a walk almost every morning. My wife takes the bus to work. Okay. Interesting. An old man was sitting alone on a bench, ducts, and pigeons were all around him. Okay. Now, let's study these for a second. Could we, let's just think about it. Could we, if we have this piece here, put a period there instead of where this semicolon is, there's a semicolon there. There's the semicolon there. There's the semicolon there. Could we, could we just put a period there and then capitalize the P, then have two sentences. Are these sentences by themselves? Cars shouldn't cost $2 million. So an independent clause, yeah, is it a sentence? Yeah. People who buy them are wasting their money. Set a sentence by itself. Yeah. I go for a walk almost every morning. Is that a sentence? Yes. My wife takes the bus to work. Is that a sentence? Yes. An old man was sitting alone on a bench so that a sentence? Yes. Ducts and pigeons were all around him. Is that a sentence? Yes. Okay. So if this and this this one starting with people and this one starting with cars, if they could both be independent sentences, then why in the world would I use a semicolon instead? It's a little strange. Why would I do it for this one? Why would I do it for this one? Why not just do sentence, sentence? Well, part of it is syntax. Sometimes we want to use punctuation just to change it up. Just to do something a little different, to play around with it a bit. So there's more. Variation. But we also can do this, and we often do this when they're very closely related. They're very closely connected. But we don't want to use one of those coordinating conjunctions that we talked about and, but, or, we don't want to use one of those. Maybe the previous sentence had one of those. So if the next sentence is the same as a complete sentence or a complete clause, and then a comma and then N, and then another one. Well, if I do that again, then my syntax is a little weak, starts to feel repetitive. The person reading this starts to get a little board. We want to avoid that. So we have a lot of tricks, a lot of tricks that we can do. We can start sentences in different ways. We can switch around the order of the independent clause and the dependent clause. We talked about how we can do that, or the phrase in front or the phrase behind the independent clause. We talked about that. There are a lot of little tricks for improving syntax. This is one of the tricks. I don't want to make two complete sentences and I don't want to use and here, because I could do that, right? It could say cars shouldn't cost $1 million. Comma. And people who buy them are wasting their money. Something about that feels a little bit odd to me. I'm not even sure why it is. I just don't like the sound of an there. It doesn't sound good. So yeah, you can do it. You could do a comma and then end. You could, and it's okay. But let's try this. Let's try to put a colon here. And then this is lowercase, not capital. And then these two sentences, they could be sentences, feel like one whole thing. They feel less separated. A period, having two sentences, it makes them feel very separate. But these ideas are so close together. This one is about expensive cars, and this one is about wasting money by buying expensive cars. They're so closely related that it makes sense to put them together into a single sentence. And one way of doing that is right there with the semicolon. And this is the same thing. I go for a walk almost every morning. My wife takes the bus to work. How are these ideas connected or related? Well, we could say there about the morning routine. Both of these are talking about what happens in the morning. Maybe these two people are married. One person goes for a walk, the other person takes the bus to work. So they're connected by this thing. And things can be connected in a lot of different ways. They just have to be closely related in some way. If you had two sentences and they have nothing to do with each other, they're not connected at all. The ideas of the sentences, the meaning of the sentence, the idea behind the sentence. They're not connected in any way, then it would be very odd to use a semicolon. Very strange. So if I said e.g. I. Am just going to do a very simple sentence. Okay? I didn't think of this one beforehand, just, just for fun. I like apples. And then we'll do this one. My sister is a Dr. I like apples. My sister is a Dr. how are these things connected together? I don't know. This doesn't have anything to do with this. So let's leave those as two sentences. Would be probably weird to have these two sentences side-by-side. I don't know what this story is about. This is a very strange description, but my point is, you want to use the semicolon only when these things are closely related. And in this case, I don't see how they would be. They don't seem closely related at all. So it'd be weird to use a semicolon there. And I'm not saying that you should always use a semicolon. I'm saying this is one of the tools in your tool belt, one of your paint brushes for painting, not something you have to do whenever you have two related ideas. And if you did do it all the time, that would be very distracting and that would hurt your syntax. And old man was sitting alone on a bench. Ducts and pigeons were all around him. Well, these two things are very connected. Well, this is describing the scene. These things are very closely related. There's the old man, there are the ducts, okay, So they're connected together. It makes sense to use the semicolon. There, there are a couple of other ways to use semi-colons, e.g. for complicated lists, have other types of punctuation in them. And also when you want to use words like however or Finally before an independent clause, that comes after another independent clause, you would use semicolon, and then you would use a comma after e.g. however, and then you would have the next independent clause. But that really is just a type of this. So I think for the sake of clarity, for the sake of not really getting mixed up in those less common uses of semi-colons, really, really less common. Let's just remember this. Because if you can master this, you can really get a feeling for how to do this. It's not that complicated, right? All you're doing is making two sentences, are making two independent clauses and not using a comma with end, or not using a period between them. That's all you're doing. Making sure of course, that these two things are closely related. And once you start using it and practicing it, you're going to see a lot of opportunities to use it. We could use it there. Yes. That makes this whole sentence feel more connected somehow. These two ideas feel closer together. That's what I want. They feel more related. That's good. That improves your syntax and it probably makes your writing more clear. Just remember, don't overuse it. Don't overuse anything. That's a good rule in general. So what I'd like you to do, make three examples, just like I did three examples to practice this. And then once you've practiced it and you feel like you know how to use it. Start using it when you need it, whenever you need to write something. Well, not whenever whenever you feel it's appropriate to use it the right time in the right place, then use it because it's one of your tools. Okay, practice that. And I will see you in the next lesson. 44. How to Use Hyphens: Let's now focus on hyphens. Hyphens, hyphens, hyphens. You see them all over the place. What does this have to do with syntax? Well, yeah, they're used in a lot of ways. You'll see them in a dresses. You might see them in numbers, all kinds of things. What does this have to do with syntax? Well, we're not going to learn all the ways we use hyphens. Talking about how we use hyphens for addresses doesn't make any sense. We're going to talk about the most common way to use hyphens, because if we can really master it, we can actually improve syntax. So what are we talking about here? Well, really, we're focusing on what are called compound compound adjectives. What is a compound adjective? Well, compound means usually more than one part, kinda stuck together. Alright, so an adjective made of more than one thing? Made of more than one word? Yes, made of more than one word, sometimes two words, sometimes three words, maybe forwards as well. I'm not sure if I've seen five word compound adjectives. Have to think about it, but maybe, yeah, maybe. So what are we doing? Well, an adjective which typically goes, as you know, in front of the noun. An adjective describes the noun. It tells us something about the noun, right? Yeah, okay. So we can often take information from a description that is about a noun and turn it into an adjective. Now if we want to do that, we're often taking several words together and we want to stick them in front of the noun to make it an adjective in front of the noun. If we want to do that, we can't have them be separate words. We have to combine them and we need some kind of glue to stick them together. What is the glue? The glue is the hyphen. That's what it is. Now, there are a couple of important things here. First, it's important to remember that adjectives cannot be plural. So if I say e.g. I. Am 95 years old, here the S in their years, years, more than one year. That could not be part of an adjective about me if I were going to make a compound adjective. So I would have to take out the S and put it together with the 95 and the old to make a combined word, a compound word that could go in front of maybe man or English teacher or whatever. So often, often what we're doing is taking a sentence that doesn't need to be as complicated or doesn't need to be as long as it is. And at least shortening it so that maybe we can add something else, some more information. And that can make our sentences more interesting, more varied. So let's take this first one here. I don't want to live in a 100-year-old building. You can see that I've made a compound adjective out of 100 year old, maybe a 95-year-old English teacher. What would this sentence B, if I want it to say the same thing, but not write it like this. Well, it would probably go something like, I don't want to live in a building that is 100 years old. Now, Is that wrong? I don't want to live in a building that is 100 years old. Now it's not wrong. It's not wrong. It's okay. But notice that it's kind of a long sentence. Maybe we should just stop it there. Notice that we're not really saying a lot of stuff here. And we're kind of using a lot of grammar to say it. We're taking up a lot of space. We could take all of that and just stick it in front of building. So I don't want to live in a 100-year building then. And this is the really cool thing. This is the thing I really want you to remember. Then you have the ability to once again use that to add something else. I don't want to have to live in a 100-year old building that is always having problems, that is always breaking down, that is cold in the winter or whatever, something like that. Now I can add more information because I'm not just saying 100 years old using the thing that I'm adding on to building. So the cool thing, and remember, we talked about using more than one adjective in front of a main noun. The really cool thing is, as I mentioned earlier in the course, you can do maybe three, sometimes four, sometimes five adjectives in front of this. We'll call it the main noun, right? And the cool thing about that is that not all of those adjectives have to be words like blue or old. They can be things like 100-year-old, and that counts as one of the adjectives in front of your main noun. So we could say, I don't want to live in a 100-year old prewar building. And by the way, pre-war would also have a hyphen there prewar building. So that's two, but I'm saying a lot of information in front of building. I don't want to live in an ugly 100-year-old brick building and the brick would be the material. Okay, so we can say that. Then you could say that is always having problems or that is cold in the winter. You could even say if you wanted to make a sentence that's really colorful and has a lot of information. I don't want to live in an ugly 100-year old brick building in the middle of nowhere that is really cold in the winter. Something like that. Wow, this, in this that allows me to then add more information. But I can't do that unless I have first my descriptions of this main noun in front of the noun, that's the main point. Using this way of describing things is not wrong, but often not very efficient. You could say, of course, I am sad, I am sad. You're sad. But what if you said, I'm a sad Banker? Okay, that's a little bit more interesting. So sad now is in front of banker. Now that's not a compound adjective yet. We're just saying sat in front of banker, but it's getting a little better because we have the adjective in front of the noun. Now how about this? I'm a sad middle aged banker. Wu, middle hyphen aged, middle aged. I'm a sad middle aged Banker. Okay. This is a little bit more colorful. I'm a sad, lonely, middle aged banker with no savings and hardly any friends. This is, this is so sad, but it is vivid. It is very clear. And we now have a lot of description, a lot of information in one sentence, partly due to our compound adjective. So I hope now you can see the power of the compound adjective. Now, we are going to explore compound adjectives in more detail with examples. But I like to just answer a question that you might have in the back of your mind. Okay? Can I just put together any words that I want in front of a main noun with a hyphen and then boom, that's an adjective. Not quite. There is some freedom here. You can be creative, Absolutely, Absolutely. E.g. you might say something like maybe you make something up. Well, this lesson is very pleasing. Pleasing to my brain. Alright? Alright. So you've described it, it is, we've used our basic structure is like this one we talked about. That is something, something, something usually it's after the, is that would be there after that. We try to take those words and we can make them into a compound adjective. So if we're going to do this, we might say, to be creative. Oh, that was a very, a very, how would you say it? Think about it. How would you say it? We want to use pleasing, we want to use brain. Would say, brain hyphen pleasing lesson. That was a very brain pleasing lesson. Now, now I'm not saying that's not even a word as far as I know. I'm not saying that this is very normal. I'm saying you can be a little creative here. This is a chance to make new adjectives. You can kind of come up with new adjectives that you think fit. What do you want to say? So that's kind of cool. However, if you go crazy with this, you're going to eventually make one that just sounds so weird that nobody understands what you're saying. So my recommendation would be to use ones that are already common. Once in a while you want to use something that's really clever, brain pleasing. But I would recommend that you do a search, do a Google search to see if this one is used. Try to use ones that are kind of out there, use ones that other people use because that is really the most common thing for compound adjectives. Compound adjectives usually are not just whatever random words stuck together. They're more often common groups of words stuck together with hyphens. So the best tools you have there are of course, what you're reading, that's always a great resource for picking up new compound adjectives. And a search engine, like Google. Google one and you'll see if that's normal or not. Does anybody say brain pleasing? You can't really find it anywhere. So maybe I won't use it or I'm really sure this is what I want to say. So I'm going to say it even though I know it's kind of weird, I would recommend sticking with the ones that you typically see together. Many of these are regarded as words by themselves. They're considered to be one word. One word is two words with a hyphen. Three words with a hyphen is still considered to be one word, which means you can also often find them in a dictionary. So when you're reading, look up the ones that you find in the dictionary so that you can better understand them. That's really the best way to get a feeling for which ones are common and which ones maybe are not that common. And when maybe you've come up with one that you might not want to use because you can't find it anywhere. You can't find it anywhere. Maybe not the best idea to use it. Now, if you're still feeling a little bit confused about all of this, It's okay. We're going to talk about the specifics of which things go together with hyphens in a bit very soon. But I want us to get a feeling for this first because that's how native English speakers learn. We don't learn that specifically. We get a feeling for it over time with exposure to the language. So I want you to just get a feeling for this as we go through these examples, then we'll look at that more specific stuff. So don't worry, we'll get there. Let's look at this example. Unfortunately, I have a very bad tempered boss, a very bad tempered boss. And this would be, of course, my boss has a very bad temper, has a very bad temper. Now, we say has for this one because temper is, in this case a noun. So we use has instead of is. If we used is, is very, and then we would write bad and also hyphen tempered. This is one of those examples where if you look this up in the dictionary, it will say adjective, bad tempered. So unlike the one I just talked about, pleasing to my brain, remember I said pleasing to my brain. Unlike that one, this is in the dictionary. And because it is in the dictionary as one word with the hyphen as an adjective. Even if you write it with, is it still hyphenated? So treat it just as a regular word that happens to have a hyphen. And that's what can make this hyphen thing kind of tricky. Sometimes we're using it, not for things you find in the dictionary, but to talk about the age of something or the number of something, e.g. I. Might say a seven page book. I don't know why a book would be seven pages, but a seven page book, seven hyphen page, not pages, because this cannot be plural, but I've made an adjective for book in front of book. Okay. But you wouldn't find that in the dictionary seven page because I can put eight page or nine page or ten-page. It's about number, it's about year. And then sometimes they might be making up my own adjectives like brain pleasing, which I can't find it in the dictionary. It's not in the dictionary, but a couple of people are using it there it is in an article and I found it in a book. So maybe I'll use it. Okay, great. You have to be careful with that, but that's great. Then probably most often I'm going to come across ones like this, bad tempered, which are compound adjectives, but are kind of fixed, considered words by themselves. And for these, you can't say them the other way. You can't say bad, space, temperate as two words. They're always together. You'll always see state of the art, these four words together like this. You can look it up in the dictionary. It is state of the art. It is a state of the art robot, whether it goes in front of the noun or after the noun, this robot is state of the art. My boss is very bad tempered. It's still going to be a compound adjective with hyphens. Now, the thing that makes this type easier is that hey, there it is in the dictionary. I can look it up. I can read some example sentences. It's all over the place. Okay, great. The thing that might make the other type easier, the kind I might make by myself is that there are patterns. There are patterns, general pairings of words, common types of words. That you'll see together and we will talk about that shortly. So I hope I hope it's starting to get a little clearer. Unfortunately, I have a very bad tempered boss who and then I could say his behavior who always blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately, my boss is very bad tempered. Still. I get that advantage when I put it in front of the noun of being able to add more things after it. Who? With, in things like that allow me to stick other details on after the main noun. This is a state of the art. Robot. State of the art is a very common usage of 123 hyphens, but it's still considered one word, still considered an adjective. He's a pretty well-known speaker. Now the reason that I mentioned this example, someone who is well-known, most people know this person. The reason I mentioned this one is that this is a weird one. And there are some weird ones which can be written. Either way. You could say he's a pretty well space known speaker without the hyphen. And that's not considered a compound adjective anymore. Now it's considered two separate words that are both now about speaker. It's not really considered a compound adjective. It's most often written as a compound adjective like this. Now it's considered to be an adjective as one piece, one word about speaker. So it's kinda weird. You'll come across some that are written both ways. Sometimes it's 5050, sometimes it's more often not hyphenated and sometimes you will find words that have lost the hyphenation and become one word. Kind of a process. First they just put together and then that becomes normal. People often put these two words together. And then they get a hyphen because they're often together. Oh, like state-of-the-art, like bad tempered or we usually put bad temper it together. Okay. Then eventually sometimes they become one word. They get so stuck together that you just remove the hyphen. So this is kind of a gray area. It is something that doesn't have very clear rules. And sometimes people write it one way and sometimes the other. The best thing to do is just search online and find what is common. What most people do and go with that. I sometimes look upwards because I wonder too most people hyphenate this or not. I'm not quite sure. So I just look it up and that's okay. You don't have to know everything. Sometimes looking things up is the best thing to do. An example might be something like teenager, teenagers written as one word as a noun, but it used to be often written with a hyphen between teen and Ager teenager. It changes. It's a gradual process. Language is kind of messy. And not everything is always super clear. Not everything always follows a rule. There are trends. You just have to kind of pay attention and soak it in as best you can absorb, absorb it, absorb it. Now the last one, I love the blue-green see off the coast of Bali. This one is just using two colors. Now you have to be a little bit careful with colors. So blue-green makes sense because it's a little bit blue and a little bit green. And you can imagine a color that's kinda between them. But if someone said red, yellow, that wouldn't really make sense because there's already a name for that. It's called Orange, Right? So that would be a little bit weird to say that one, but you could say e.g. red, pink. And that would be okay. Sometimes you hear ish at the end of the first one, you'll see something like this. Reddish. Often when you see colors, you'll see the first one with an issue at the end. Reddish, reddish pink. And that would be pretty common. That's probably more common than red pink, but red pink is okay. Bluish green, you would hear greenish blue. Yeah. Also. Okay. Now I know this is a lot and it's not quite as simple as are rules about commas 0. The comma goes there, the comma goes there. And this is a little messier because of these different, these different types that we talked about. I realized that I realized that it's a little stressful when you hear that things change over time, okay? Don't get stressed out about it. If you have the attitude of just kind of absorbing this stuff, being aware of it, picking it up where you see it, looking things up, researching things on your own. When you're curious, you're going to get it. It's going to be a process. It may not be a very short process, but you're going to get it if you just keep exploring. Now. Now the good news is that there are some things that can make this a little more clear. So let's just quickly go over some of the common patterns that you'll see for compound adjectives or adjectives that use hyphens. 45. Building Compound Adjectives with Hyphens: We've generally covered how we make and use compound adjectives with hyphens. But it might feel a little bit messy. You might be feeling a little bit anxious about, okay, but which kind of word goes with which kind of word? Well, let's quickly go through that. This is a little bit dry, but we'll go through it pretty quickly. I just want to give you the structures, the basic structures with a few examples for each, so that you'll know what kind of words you can put together when you're making compound adjectives. So let's just quickly go through these. And I know it's not that interesting, but it's useful to know. So we could do a noun and a past participle. Remember a past participle is a word like taken, seen this form bin. But remember that a past participle can also be just the regular verb, like baked. There's no special form of baked that's different from the past, the irregular past tense. So that the same, so many verbs, it will be the same for the past participle and the regular past tense. But there will be some that are different, like these, that you probably know. You could do a noun and then a past participle or a noun and an adjective or a noun. And then in I-N-G verb, now actually this is called a present participle. I don't want to get mixed up and all of that stuff. Let's just say an I-N-G verb and I think that will make it a little simpler. Hay, and of course then we have the hyphen in between. So some examples would be chocolate covered. Past participle or past tense is covered with a hyphen in the middle, raisins, chocolate covered raisins. Instead of saying raisins covered in chocolate, which is longer dairy free cookies, you often see something free means it doesn't have that dairy is what's in milk, or it is milk. So these cookies do not have cow's milk in them or butter, e.g. in them. So they're dairy free, they're gluten-free, they're fat-free. You'll see a lot of this, something free. Noun, adjective. This is now an adjective, noun, past participle. And then this one is going to be an I-N-G back breaking labor. Now that doesn't mean it actually breaks your back. It's just very hard labor us back backbreaking labor. It's very difficult. Usually physical labor or something is going to be manual. Manual labor. Manual labor that involves carrying heavy things, that sort of thing. Okay. So that's these pretty straightforward. Adjective plus past participle. Adjective plus noun, or adjective plus an I-N-G verb. Okay, so that's pretty similar to this except we're starting with an adjective, dark colored clothes. Dark colored clothes. Dark is an adjective. Colored past participle. Dark colored clothes. The clothes are dark in color, but we wouldn't usually say dark in color. We might just say the clothes are dark if we set it the other way. You could say dark colored close. Long-term plans, very common by the way. To have long-term plans, long-term and short-term are both extremely common. Long. This is an adjective term, this is a noun. A term is a period of time, so it's a noun. Long-term plans, slow moving, slow, of course is an additive, not fast. You're going to have fast-moving. But you'd probably just say fast traffic. You can have fast as well, fast moving traffic. Yeah. I suppose that's okay. Slow moving traffic, slow. And then an I-N-G verb, also known as a present participle, but let's just call it ING and then traffic. Alright, pretty straightforward. Number plus a noun. Now this is the one that I talked about before. This is the one that you should be familiar with. This is the one that you will not find usually in the dictionary because you could change it to any number. You won't see a 73 page book, probably in the dictionary, because how could that be? Well, you'd have to put a 73 page book is 74, page book is 75 page book. It doesn't make sense. So a lot of these e.g. I think you'll probably see backbreaking, backbreaking labor. You'll probably see these in the dictionary. And it might even be over time, they become one word. So words that are hyphenated often lose their hyphenation over time and just become one compound word. And in fact, I think I've seen this one written both ways with the hyphen and without I think I've seen it written without a hyphen as well. So this, this number noun one usually is going to be written out like this. Five FIV E7. However, honestly, honestly a lot of people will, will write something like a five, a five year old cat. A five-year-old cat. And people will write the number five there, so you'll see it, although you're supposed to write out the whole thing. So this is kind of okay, maybe if you're just text messaging or something like that, but generally you're supposed to write out, you're supposed to write out the whole thing. I use this one a lot where I just write the number a lot. But if you're gonna do it the right way for now, I guess it's, I guess it's this a seven-hour journey. Now remember there will be probably an a there or the the seven-hour journey. Our seven our our journey. A seven-hour journey. My five-mile run. The five-mile run I took yesterday, I'm going out for a five-mile run. So usually these will have before them some thing that lets you know, Hey, this is a noun. This is a noun. This is a noun, but of course it's also made of a noun and a number. But when it's made of a noun and a number, it's not unknown anymore. It's a compound adjective. Okay? The last one, an adverb plus a past participle. Past participles. These plus the ones that don't have a special form, like well rounded, well-rounded kids. Well rounded means that they are maybe funny, also smart overall, they have most of the things that you would hope that your kids have 0, you have very well-rounded kids. Now what about these LY types of adverse because not all adverbs are LY adverbs, e.g. straight. You don't say strangely, right? You say straight. Okay. Stop here. Here, that's where you stop. Here is an adverb. So what about this LY type? Should I say slowly hyphen moving or just slowly? No hyphen. And then moving. Usually it's going to be without the hyphen. So if you haven't LY adverb, It's probably going to be without. I've seen some examples where people use it with, but usually, usually the LY adverbs will not have the hyphen. This is slow moving, slow moving traffic. So we have an adjective, not an ad verb, but if it's another type of adverb, like well, e.g. then yes, it's absolutely fine and common to use the adverb plus the past participle. So I hope these are clear. Now, we've come to the end of our focus on syntax. We've been focusing on syntax for awhile because it's so important, it's such an important part of writing and have structure. We're gonna be focusing next on how we compose paragraphs, longer things, full compositions, because that's very important as well. But I'd just like to mention one or two things. Before we move on to the next section. Remember that all of the things we're learning to improve syntax, to improve writing in general. These are all just tools in our tool belt. It's not about the tool. It's about what we do with the tool. So always remember that urine artists creating something and all of these things are just things for you to use to make what you're creating better, more clear, including having good syntax, e.g. good punctuation, using compound adjectives. So always then keep in mind, what are you saying? What are you trying to say to the other person? What idea do you want to communicate to them when they read this? Always keep that at the front of your mind. As you learn these tools, you're not learning them, just to learn them. You're learning them for a higher goal to be able to communicate well. And when it comes to syntax, when it comes to things like using commas, well, think of it as glasses. Glasses take what's coming in, the light that's coming in and changes its slightly so that to your eyes, it's clearer, It's sharper, it's in-focus. What you put down on the page or what you type out or what you text. These are the glasses that you're creating for the other person to see your meaning more clearly. If you just say whatever, in whatever way, then they don't have any glasses that they can use to understand you. And they have to think very carefully about, okay, what the heck is this person talking about? But if you create a pair of glasses for them, if you carefully craft what you want to say using these tools, using the paint brushes that we're learning to use in this course. Then you've given them a pair of glasses and then they can take those glasses and put them on and then everything becomes more clear. I know what you mean. Yes, I agree with you. Oh, that's a very good point. Or that thing that you said is so memorable or this description, it really makes me want to go to this place. I really want to take a vacation here to whatever you're saying. You're giving them the glasses that they need to see your meaning crystal clear. So keep that thought in mind as we go on to the next section of the course, we're going to be focused on bigger things, on structure, paragraphs, and then even bigger essays. How we can build out our ideas in a longer, coherent form. 46. Overview of Paragraphs: We've spent quite a bit of time so far in this course dealing with the structure of sentences. How can we put together very clear sentences? And that's very important. It's a building block, right? A very important building block. But we have to go a little bit broader. We've looked at a couple of paragraphs so far in this course. But I want to spend some time talking about how to build out a good paragraph, how to structure a paragraph before we can get into how to write longer things like essays. If you want to write a novel, if you want to write a long email, if you want to write an essay for university, or if you want to write a blog post for all of these things, you have to know how to organize or structure your writing. So we start with paragraphs. What is a paragraph? Let's just say what a paragraph is. And what it is not. Is a paragraph like a sentence. We talked about a sentence. A sentence has to have the subject, and it has to have the predicate or the verb about the subject. Does a paragraph have to have anything like that? Any grammar that has to be there or it's not a paragraph? Well, Not really. Not really. We know how to make a sentence. Paragraphs are made of at least one sentence, at least, at least one. Now usually it's going to be more than one. Most of the time of paragraph will have more than one, but you could have a one sentence paragraph. It depends on what you need to focus on or talk about a point or idea. So you can have a very long paragraph with many sentences, ten sentences, 20 sentences. You could have a very short paragraph with one sentence or two sentences. Now, there are common paragraph structures and we'll talk about those. But really, really This is it. You're talking about usually one point or one idea. And you're spending as many sentences as you need in order to talk about one point or one idea. So to complete this point that you're trying to make, to complete this idea that you're trying to explain. How many sentences do you need? 346. Okay. It's not about how many there are. It's about completing this point or the idea. So this is not a building block in the same way that a sentences. This is just a way of organizing. Let's call it a unit. Let's call it a unit of organization. For sentences. Really, when we're writing, we're writing sentences, That's what we're doing. And we might organize our sentences in different ways. Some of our sentence organizations are called novels. These are sentences that tell a story about something that's not true. Alright, so it's called a novel. One type of organization of sentences is called an essay, where we might be trying to explain one point or one idea, but it takes a little while to do it. So we need several different paragraphs because there are smaller ideas inside of that main idea. So beyond the sentence, we're really just talking about different names for how we're organizing sentences. And that's kind of it. Usually we're going to go into more detail and talk about this with examples. But you could say you have an idea and that is organized into some sentences. And then when you're finished with that, it's time to move on to the next one. And now you're explaining another idea. And then it's time to move on to the next one and the next one, and the next one and the next one. Now this might be different, e.g. if you're writing something down on a piece of paper compared to writing an email, the way that we separate things in an email is a little bit different. And we'll talk about that too. So I just want to introduce the idea so that we can be on the same page before we really start talking about how to build out paragraphs. How to build out longer things like essays. How do we think about writing an article? How do we think about writing a scientific paper or an email? Before we can get to these things and how we would organize them, we have to start on the same page. I think we are now. So let's get started with paragraphs. 47. Structuring Paragraphs: This is just my opinion, but I think that we people normally think in paragraphs because we don't just think a single little thought. That's one sentence. We have a complete thought. And then if we were going to take that complete thought and put it down on a piece of paper or on our phone or on a computer. We're going to put it down outside of our heads. It would be a paragraph. So I think it's a very, it's a very natural way to organize our ideas. If you know how to build a paragraph, well, if you know how to create a clear paragraph, you can write well, you can express yourself well, because all writing is just paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. Of course there's a little more to it than that, but really, that's what it is. In paragraphs are made of sentences, but sentences usually don't. Let us express everything we want to say. Maybe it's only half of an idea, right? We need to give an example to really say what we mean. We have more in our minds than just one little sentence. So how can we make clear paragraphs? How can we do this? Well, well, I think there are a few basic things that we should keep in mind. I'm going to mention those. Then we'll talk about a very general, very general structure that you should probably just ignore that or at least know and then ignore. And then we will look at, will look at a real example. One of the key things to remember is that each sentence in your paragraph should somehow be about or support or help. The main idea that you're trying to say. If you say something that's completely unrelated to what you're trying to express, the idea. You're trying to express, it should probably be in a different paragraph. So everything that you say, every sentence you make has to point to that main point or that main idea. So here it is. Here's my main point. And these are the sentences that I'm building to point to that I can't say it all with one sentence. Maybe sometimes, but usually not. So I'm going to make some sentences that helped me to make it clear to explain it so that people will. That's what you mean. Okay. I see. I understand that description. I understand that point. You're trying to make I understand that idea that you're trying to express. I understand that argument that you're trying to explain. You disagree with me. Now, I realized I was wrong or at least I know why you disagree with me. I understand everything's pointing to it and that seems kind of obvious but just important to keep in mind. The other thing that can also help and be a very powerful tool, both for paragraphs and for longer things. Is the outline. Often, often the way you choose to arrange your sentences, the order you put them in, can really change what other people understand, how they understand you. How clear your paragraph is. If you have a simple outline and we're going to talk more about outlines very soon. If you have a simple outline for your paragraph, you can at least have an idea of where you're going and where you're starting. And maybe it's just one word like e.g. I. Might say, social media. It's not my real opinion. I'm just saying this social media and then I put here bad, it's not a whole sentence, I'm just writing my idea here. Maybe then I can have one of my bullet points. And this is just a very rough, very rough idea to say something like was for connection. Was for connection. And then I underlined was because I really want to say that it's not anymore and maybe I'll remember that I want to say that. Okay. And then maybe I have another one and another one. And I make my own little structure so the outline can be a great way to just get your ideas in order so that you can try something built out a few sentences, put them in the order that you think they should go in and see if it makes sense. And that's the, that's the really important thing to remember. I can't tell you, oh, you have to do this. Oh, you have to do this. You must do this. There are no rules. There are no rules. There are common ways of doing things, what we could call common practices. Common practices. But when it comes to how you compose your paragraph, there aren't rules, just common things that people often do and we'll talk about those. I'm gonna go through an example structure here. But you're really free. You can say things how you want to say them. Now there are some basic rules around it. E.g. indentation. If you're writing at the beginning of a paragraph, you want to indent. Especially if you're writing on paper, you want to indent or you're writing an essay or something. The first line of the paragraph should be in your use the Tab key, and that's called an indentation. Now this is changing a little bit because we all write emails. So often we all write online, so often we all write blogs. So often we all write whatever answers to questions on Amazon or whatever. So often that instead of using the indentation, it's common now to see just a space between, so you double-space down instead of the indentation. So these things change to now it's common to just start on the same line, everything starts on the same line and then there's just a space in the middle between paragraphs. Okay? Alright, but that's, that's kind of it. Now that said, I do want to go over a structure. I want you to see what I learned e.g. in middle-school about how to make a paragraph. Maybe middle school, maybe it was primary school. I don't remember where I learned it. We learned a basic paragraph structure that we're supposed to follow. Now, as Picasso said, you only learn the rules so that you can break them? Or did he say you can only break the rules after you learn them? Something like that. So I'm going to teach you how people learn it, but then I'm going to ask you to immediately just ignore it or keep it in the back of your mind. Because I wanted you to know what people learn. I want you to know what I learned, but then don't be limited to this. Don't say, Oh, yes, I learned that Luke taught me a paragraph structure in my course on writing and I must follow it exactly. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying I'm going to tell you this and then I'm going to ask you to just push it to the back of your mind and use it as a kind of general starting place, maybe to help you get started. And then start playing around a little bit more and find your own style, find your own structure. So the general way that will do it is you want to say your main idea first. If people don't know what you're talking about, then there'll be confused. And you don't want them to be confused. So to avoid confusion, at the beginning, make a sentence about what you're talking about. What is your main idea? This is what I want to say. I want to say this first. Now that doesn't have any support, it has no examples. So if people just see that sentence, they'll say, Okay, well, alright, I don't know. But if you explain it, That's a complete point, a complete idea. Ah, people should be able to read it and say, Ah, so first maybe explain your main point. This is just a simple main point. Then maybe your second sentence is to explain it in a little bit more detail, a little more depth. So okay. You think you understand, but let me give you another sentence to expand it a little bit and tell you a little bit more to clarify it. Now, you really understand my opinion, but you might not understand why I have my opinion. So for the next one, I'll do some examples. One example, maybe two examples. Depending on what I'm saying, maybe I need two examples to really explain myself. Maybe I need three. But let's just say Given example or some kind of support for what you're saying. An example is great because people can understand examples. When people see an example or read an example, they say, Oh, now I get it. When you explain it, you just set it. I didn't really get it. When you give me a little story, when you give me a real life example, now I get it. Okay? So now I have something that connects the opinion. This is just opinion out there and opinion land. This is a real thing in real life that helps me put the opinion into a context to see how it relates to my life, to see how it relates to the real-world. Okay. Then maybe I need to explain that a little bit more. Maybe I'll explain how the example that I gave or how the support that I gave. And maybe support is something like an experiment or an analogy or something that you've seen firsthand, or a study that was done, all kinds of different things, whatever this support is, you explain how this connects to the main idea. The average smart person. They'll know that'd be able to see this and they'll get it. Just, just make it super, super clear. So say, okay, now that I've told you this example, now that I've told you this idea that supports my opinion, now let's go back and let me explain what it means related to the main idea. Okay? Now, our teachers told us conclude, conclusion, summary. Even I don't like the idea of the summary. I wouldn't say it as a summary. A summary is to try to take all of this and condense it down into this, a final sentence. How can you really do that? And so people end up just saying, so in conclusion, I think, right? Okay. Just maybe say your main opinion in a different way, a new way, a way that is now more clear because we've explained the example, give another sentence that is similar to this one, but maybe a little more developed, maybe a little more advanced, slightly higher level. This is the basic structure that we learned when we're in, Whenever. I don't even know when I learned this, but this is what we learn. Learn this, practice it. Try to write a short outline based on a simple topic that you're interested in. Make a little outline and then practice, Structure. Do it. But then don't get locked into saying now I must do this every time. You use it as a starting point, as I mentioned, and then start playing around and find your own way of doing it, as long as it's clear, it's okay. Let's look at an example with this general structure following our social, our social media opinion idea. Let's look at a simple paragraph example explaining a point or an idea. 48. Full Paragraph Example: Just to give you an example of the structure we talked about, Let's look at a paragraph composed with that structure, basically, generally about social media. I'm not saying this is my real opinion. We're just using this as our basic example. And you might use it when you're thinking about how to build your own paragraphs when you are practicing. So let's read through it. The uncomfortable fact is that social media is not all good. So that's my statement right at the beginning, there is evidence to suggest that, well, it was invented to bring people together. The opposite has happened, not bringing people together. This is to explain my main point and a little bit more detail to give you a little bit more context. Now, my support, how many times have you decided to stay home and casualty text rather than meet a friend for lunch? And if you go out with a friend, are you connecting with the person across the table or are you distracted by updates and notifications? So this is kind of using an example that most people reading it will have some familiarity with. They'll have some memory of doing this themselves. I am maybe I do that, or at least they know it's a common problem to ask a question. These are called rhetorical questions, which means their questions which get people to think and nobody has to answer the question. Have you ever done this? How many times have you decided to stay at home? Oh, yeah. I guess I have done that a few times. I didn't really feel like going out, so I just stayed home and played with Instagram or whatever. Okay. So that's my support. Now I explain my support and how it connects back to my statement. Even when we spend time with friends, in some sense we are alone. So I'm saying we do things with friends, we stay home alone. Maybe it doesn't make much difference because it all ties back to the original thing I said, which is, social media is not all good. Okay. Now finally, I just want to restate my point, my initial idea, My thought, that will hopefully be more clear now that we've been through my explanation, my examples. Social media creates isolation. It's ironic. It's ironic means it's supposed to create connection, but it doesn't. It creates isolation. Now if I put that as my first sentence, it might not be so clear, right? What do you mean it creates isolation. How could it, it's social? How could it create isolation? Which means to make people alone, doesn't really make sense. But if I say that at the end, after I've explained this part, after I've mentioned this part, which is something that most people will know about then, oh yeah, I guess I can kinda see that this whole thing has a structure that feels coherent. I followed my structure that I gave you earlier, which is to start with my main idea and move through into more detail and then back to the main idea. And hopefully I've left my reader with the clear understanding of what I'm trying to say, even if they don't agree with me. So I hope this is clear. This is just an example. I'm not even saying it's a great paragraph. It's just one example that follows the general structure. I encourage you to take a simple topic and opinion that you have about something. Make a simple outline and then try to do it yourself. Write a paragraph that has this general structure. But then take that when you're happy with it. Take that and play with it a little more, see if you can do something different. Does that make it clear? Does that make it more interesting? I really want you to continue playing with this so that you don't get locked into a sort of way of thinking of only making paragraphs 1 way. I must do it this way. That's wrong, that's not right. So this is a starting point. As Picasso said, once you know the rules, then you can break them. I don't think those were his exact words, but it was something like that. Anyway, hopefully this is clear. In the next lesson we're going to be talking about how we choose our form and our style when we're writing paragraphs or putting paragraphs together. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 49. Form Follows Purpose: I'd like to make it clear that in this section of the course, we're building towards something. We're building toward being able to write long composition of some kind, a blog, post, an article and say something longer. That's clear, that's concise, that's well-organized, well-structured, that's good. That's what we're building toward. We've talked about what a paragraph is. We've talked about how to generally make a paragraph some different ways that you can, some different ways that you can do that. Now, we're going to talk about how to choose the form of your writing based on what you're trying to accomplish, what you're trying to do with your writing. So now that we understand paragraphs pretty well, we can choose the form that we might use. And then next we'll talk about structure. We'll talk about how to build an outline before we go on to talk about longer compositions. So we're progressing toward that point toward how to practice longer compositions. So what do we mean by form Exactly? Is there a difference between form and style? Yes and no. Sometimes people use these two words, foreman style interchangeably. And so that's okay, I guess what is unique about me and how do I express that uniqueness? That's often what we mean when we say style, form, let's say is how we arrange things. For this lesson, Let's call form the individual writing decisions that we may make in order to fit our purpose, what we're trying to do. I'll say that again. Let's call form the individual writing decisions we may make in order to accomplish our purpose. And that purpose may change. Sometimes we might be writing a professional e-mail or an email to a colleague. Maybe we're writing a cover letter sending out, or a CV, or a resume. Maybe we're writing a casual email to a friend. Maybe we want to write some instructions. We want to be very clear. Maybe we want to do something more artistic, something more personal. Maybe we're writing a short blog or maybe just a post somewhere on social media. And that could include, by the way, practice, exercises or practice that you may do alongside something like this course. Maybe that includes text messages to your friends. You're writing your friend to text. Do you want to write it very seriously, very carefully, perfect sentences all the time. Maybe not, that might make your friends feel a little uncomfortable. How about something longer, like an essay or an article, or maybe a blog post or longer blog post. You're writing about your life, what's going on in your life, and you want to give it a lot of detail for each of these things and more. You'll want to change the way you write. You want to change how you do it in order to fit that purpose. So that's what I mean. When I say form follows purpose. And all I really want to do in this short lesson is to communicate this idea to you before you start writing, simply ask yourself this question, what is my purpose? What am I doing? And then think about how to adapt or fit the form to that purpose so that you can have the effect you want to have so that you're not misunderstood. We want to avoid being misunderstood, right? So just because you're taking a writing course and learning some tools to improve your writing doesn't mean now that you have to have one way of doing it. Now. No different ways depending on what you're doing exactly. And all I want to say is, before you start writing anything, just have a quick thought. What am I doing? What am I trying to accomplish? What is my purpose? And if you answer that question, you should come up with something like this, something like one of these. And then you make a decision about how you're going to do that. Then you decide on the form of your writing based on that purpose, based on what you're trying to do. Now, I'm going to talk through each of these and give you a few ideas. These are not rules. This is just my way of thinking about each of these. If you have other things to add or you don't quite agree, That's okay. That's okay. We all have different ways of doing things. I just wanted to talk through these and give you some suggestions about how you might adjust the form of your writing based on, based on these. Okay, so what about a professional email? When you're writing a professional e-mail? What do you not want to happen at all costs? You want to avoid being misunderstood, right? So you're not writing extremely complicated sentences that needs to be read three times in order to be understood. You want to be extremely, extremely simple to avoid complexity. Because when you're writing a professional email, generally people are busy. They don't have a lot of time to try to figure out what you're trying to say. They want to get through your email. They want to get your point. Very clearly. They want to understand and then they want to move on to the next one. So don't try to impress them with a very creative flowery style. So I'll add that avoid flowery language. And I would add to this simple kind of goes without saying but short do not make it longer than it needs to be short. Very short. Don't say something extra just because you feel you have to say what you need to say. Say it clearly so that you're not misunderstood and someone who's busy can read it in 45 s or less unless it's really necessary to explain something in detail. Now another thing on the avoid side that I would I would mention is avoid long introductions or asides. Oh, and by the way, remember when you explain something and that's not really related to what you're trying to communicate. This is generally considered a waste of time. You can tell me that sort of thing in person. But let's get down to business. Let's do what we need to do. Don't make long complicated asides. Don't even make simple asides that are too long, just don't do it. Generally, generally say what you want to say. And also, if you're going to ask someone to do something, we could call that a request. And this is often called a CTA, which stands for a call to action. This should be separate. So you want to separate the call to action or the real reason that you're writing this. What is the request? I need this, this and this, these three things. This is separate from any details. Maybe you're answering another question that someone asked you. They asked you a question, you give a quick answer to that, and then you need information from them. Whatever that is, whatever action they need to take next should be clearly separated from everything else. So as a separate CTA, very important. So that may be for professional emails. What about a cover letter? What is a cover letter? This is what you send along with a CV or a resume to say why you're qualified for a job. Now, this does not mean that you explain all of your work history. That's what your CV or your resume for. That's its purpose. This is to introduce what makes you qualified and you can mention some of those things in your cover letter. But generally you want to focus on selling yourself, why you're the best fit for this job. So it is more about writing skill and not just about listing out the things you've done. Otherwise, it's not really a cover letter. So this one really needs to paint, paint a picture. This one needs to really pop. I've used that term before. It needs to really be impactful, needs to make an impact. It does need to probably be at least clear, fairly simple. It can be a little bit longer than a normal email. Probably should be a little bit longer, but it needs to paint a picture of you what your strengths are. And after I read it, I should feel, Wow, this person, this person has a unique ability to do what they do well, they may have the same general qualifications compared to other candidates, but this person has a clear mind and they're able to put their thoughts down in a clear and concise way very carefully. And that tells me that this person is careful, is clear, is concise, well-organized. So it's sort of a way to show your positive characteristics, not only in what you describe, but also in the way that you write it. So this has to be extremely, we've talked about this as well. Well crafted. Hey, look a compound adjective, extremely well crafted. So you might spend three or four days working on that. It's only three paragraphs long, short paragraphs. But you spent a lot of time on it. You keep working at it and you do ten versions of it and you're asking your friends, Hey, what do you think about this? Does this have more impact? Which one is better? Let me compare, let me keep working on it. I wanted to represent me and my mind. So this one, you want to maybe make it a little bit more interesting than a simple professional e-mail. This is simpler, more dry, not so interesting. This is a little more vivid. It pops more. You might add more description, more detail. And you're really, what you're really doing is giving a pitch for yourself. It is a pitch. For yourself, which may include examples, which may include some smallest sides. What is it that represents you and how do you make that pop? So that would be a consideration if you are writing a cover letter. Alright, I'm going to spend three days on this. It's going to be the best thing I've ever written in my life. What about instructions? What if you're writing instructions? Well, we've been talking about paragraphs. If you're writing instructions, you want somebody to do something step-by-step. Does it make sense to have a giant chunk of text? That's what a paragraph often is, right? It's a big block of text. Maybe not, when someone sends me instructions as a big chunk of text, I feel more confused. Which which sentence in my own in this paragraph, how God was step one to step three. I don't know what's going on. I feel frustrated immediately. So maybe it makes sense to avoid paragraphs. Maybe they're avoid paragraphs. And maybe for that, instead you're going to use numbered lists. Do this and then do this and do a bullet list or a numbered list of very simple, very short sentences that simply say actions. They have no other details, no other descriptions, unless that detail or description tells you what you should do or which one it is. I know there are three of them. Which one is it? Well, maybe that's unnecessary detail. It's not necessary. You get it out. Don't put it in, don't add anything that's not there because that could cause confusion and probably don't use a paragraph. So don't always assume you have to use a paragraph. You may not. Sometimes it's not necessary. In fact, sometimes, like with instructions, it causes more confusion. What about personal or artistic writing? Maybe that's just practice. Maybe you're just doing some practice. Or maybe you want to post something on social media. Maybe you just enjoy writing. Maybe you have a little story you want to write or a longer story you want to write can be very fun to write a story. Maybe you have a short, short blog that you keep. That's all great. Now what about the form for this? Well, there isn't really a form for this. This is where you need to find what is u. This is what we might call style. So if that means when you're writing a story, you want to focus on the landscape. You'd like to describe the landscapes and how the characters look. Maybe you, maybe you want to think about how you would lay out those sentences. Have a structure to your description using lots of adjectives, probably interesting adjectives that flow and give people a clear picture. Things we've talked about already in this course. Maybe you'd like to post things on social media, your opinions. Well, how can you express your opinion in a way that makes people laugh when they read it, they understand it and they smile. Or maybe you want people to, after they read what you write, think deeply about what you said. You went your words to stick with them throughout the day. To really consider your opinion carefully. Well, maybe you might use some examples, some really interesting, vivid examples following a clear sentence, really, really clear, concise sentence that explains your point. I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just saying discover this. And you can only do this through play. So if you don't know what your style is, this is the place where you figure that out. Doing artistic writing, writing for fun, keeping a blog, this sort of thing. Writing post on social media, answering questions on Quora, communicating with people on message boards may be starting to get into poetry, reading poetry and trying your own poetry. This is a great way to just play around. Getting used to different ways that people use to express themselves creatively. Playing around with that in your own writing until you have a sense that yes, this is my style. This feels like me. This is me, so I'm not telling you what that is. I'm saying you have to discover it and you can only discover it through practice and through play. I think some of that should be public. If you can make some of that public, whether it's a blog or on social media. That's a way to sort of give yourself pressure to feel a little bit pushed who people are going to be reading this. And that's a great way to push yourself to improve actually faster. Do I always have to focus on this? Can I ever just relax and not worry about grammar, not worry about syntax. How clear my writing is. Can I just relax sometimes? I would say yes, yes. Especially if you're sending messages to your friends. When you're sending a text or messaging with your friends. Usually the expectation is low. Nobody is expecting you to be perfect. People know that you're either doing this or doing something else while you're, while you're writing, you're not really focused on it. You're just having a casual conversation. So for that reason, usually focusing on things like syntax. And I write this paragraph very well. Usually that stuff is not so important. You can do whatever. Whatever you want. And that may mean, that may mean using a lot of abbreviations. A lot of people write things like for you in our Ru, this sort of thing. I mean, they change over time, of course. Should you not do that, but you can do that. You can do whatever you want. This is your place to just communicate with friends. I mean, I'm not telling you what you should do in any of these, but I am asking you to think about how you're going to communicate based on your purpose. Now, just be aware that if you're chatting with someone and you don't know them well, you might want to think about it a little bit. If I'm messaging someone I don't know well, and they're misspelling every word. And their text messages look lazy. Their messages look very lazy. They don't care about this conversation at all, and they're not focused on it at all, then I feel a little uncomfortable. So just a personal recommendation here. This is something that I tried to do. I would recommend at least trying to spell correctly. And especially for people I don't know Well, spelling is not that hard because usually there's something recommending the correct spelling anyway, so you can just tap on that or click on that. So it's not that hard. And you can be sure that the other person isn't thinking they're not. They don't care about this conversation at all. I usually want to avoid annoying people. Some people have what are called pet peeves. These are things that annoy people. One of my pet peeves or a little thing that annoys me is when people write things like your, when actually it should be Y-O-U apostrophe R-E that your or there. And actually it should be T-H-E-I-R OR THE apostrophe R-E. Yeah. That annoys me a little bit, but that's just me. That's just me. So do whatever you want for casual conversation or casual chatting. Definitely. But just keep in mind that if you don't know someone very well, they might be forming their impression of you based on how you write. And that doesn't mean you should probably have long compositions and totally perfect paragraphs. But it might be a good idea to at least spell correctly and avoid some of those small things that tend to annoy people. Next, we're going to be talking about longer compositions and how we can build outlines to clearly organize ideas so that the longer composition is clear and seems logical. So that the ideas flow especially from paragraph to paragraph, but also from sentence to sentence. So organization is really one of the key things for these longer compositions to make sure that your ideas are organized. If you're writing an essay to explain your opinion about something, how do your ideas move from one point to the next so that people are convinced by what you're saying. Or if it's a description of something. Again, how is it done in a way that's well-organized so that people get a very clear picture in their minds. It's a story, e.g. a longer story. If you're writing an article or maybe a blog, this is what happened to you recently. What interesting things happen to you this week? Or maybe you're writing a blog about a job interview. And you want people to feel how you felt throughout the process. So what happened first? And how were you feeling? And then what happened next? And how are you feeling during that period? And how can you organize your ideas so that it's not just an end then, and then, and then instead, people can't stop reading it. I can't wait to find out what happened. I really want to know how you felt during this process because I feel like I'm experiencing it with you. A good, a good story is that you make people who read what you wrote feel like they were there with you or they are the character in the story. They're the one who had the interview. So we're going to talk about how we can begin to do this Next. We're going to focus on outlining. But again, the key really is how you organize your thoughts. So start thinking about this before you write anything. What is my purpose? And maybe consider these things that we talked through. But I'm not saying this is the final answer. You really have to discover these things for yourself. Alright, that's it for this lesson. I will see you in the next one. 50. Building an Outline: Remember we talked about for paragraphs using a simple outline to organize your sentences. Well, some people use that, some people don't. I think it's fine because a paragraph is so short, usually to not outline paragraphs. I don't usually outline my paragraphs. But if you're writing something longer, if you're writing an article about something, if you're writing a blog post about something, if you're telling a story, you're trying to explain something in many steps with several different paragraphs In order it makes sense to use an outline. This is the easiest, probably the best way to organize your ideas so that they flow naturally one to the next. Because if you start writing and you don't know where you're going, then probably your reader won't know where you're going and they will feel confused. So it's a good practice before you get started with something longer. By longer. I mean, several paragraphs, many paragraphs, a whole book, whatever it is, it's a good idea. Before you get started to make a simple outline. Just make a simple structure that you can follow so that in your mind, you know where you're going next. And by the way, this is a great thing to do, e.g. for presentations so that you know where you're going next. That doesn't mean that you plan out every sentence. That just means I'm going to talk about this. Then I'm going to focus on that. Then I'm going to give this example that can actually save you a lot of time in the long run. Maybe you've explained the point and then later you explain a different thing that's kind of related. And you give an example and you realize, oh, you know what, that example would fit better over there. But now I need to rework the whole thing so that it fits into the earlier paragraph. Now I need to come up with a different example for the later paragraph. So I have to rework all of these sentences and paragraphs to make it fit, to make it flow naturally. This can be very frustrating. Some people like this process, I think it's kinda fun, but it can be frustrating. If you have a pretty clear idea. Which example you're going to use where, if you have a pretty good idea, what thing you're going to say before you say another thing. That's it, then life will be easier for you. Then you can focus on crafting one paragraph, then crafting the next one with the confidence that you know where you're going, with, the confidence that you know where you're going to end up. Really what we're doing when we're building an outline is organizing ideas by order of relevance or by order of importance. So what that means is usually we say the most important thing, our main topic or main idea. And then we support that with things which are relevant to that, but which may not be as important, they just support it. So we're organizing by relevance. If that's something like a personal blog and you want to practice outlining for a personal blog, maybe you give one simple paragraph to focus on. The main thing that happened today. The main ideas that you want to focus on for this job interview experience that you went through. What was your overall impression of this? Now I'm going to get into the details. I'm going to talk about my preparation. I'm going to talk about the actual experience itself. I'm going to talk about the result and how I felt about the result. So these things are also supporting this main thing, which is me trying to express my overall impression of this interview process and what it meant to me. So there's a lot of flexibility here. We're gonna go through an example of an outline, but I want to be clear as I have been before, that this is not the only way to do it. You can organize outlines in different ways. This is the structure I like to use for a lot of things. If I'm going to write something that's got a few paragraphs, I will usually make a quick outline that looks something like this. And that helps me to stay on track. But you can play with this. You can do different outlines structures, find what works well for you. As long as you feel like it helps you go in the right direction, know where you're going, then it's good. So even if it's not this structure, okay, that's okay. So I'm going to talk through this quickly and then we'll look at an example outline so that you can see what this would look like in practice. So let's say this is a workplace situation. This is a workplace issue. And I want to advocate for something. Maybe I want to advocate for someone getting a position. Maybe there are several different people being considered for a very important position. And I know something about this person who is under consideration. And I feel very strongly that this person should be chosen. Hey, this person's name, Let's say this person's name is Victoria. I feel that Victoria is the best person for the position and I would like to share my view on this and support it and write something very clearly. It's a few paragraphs that I will send to whoever's going to make the decision, VP of Design or whatever. Okay. They're going to make the decision. I'm going to send it to them because I know something about Victoria and what she can do and why she's the best person. This sometimes happens in companies. So it's kind of like an opinion essay. Not just my opinion, but also the reasons for my opinion, why I have my opinion that will hopefully be convincing to others when they read it. Okay, so I have here at the top of hook. Now this may be more relevant for things like presentations. When you give a presentation, you may want to start with a hook. This might be a general question, maybe it's a rhetorical question. Remember I mentioned rhetorical questions that are questions that don't need a real answers, but just something to think about. Maybe I'm going to make it personal and talk about my relationship with this issue or this person, e.g. to make it clear that this is why I'm interested in this. Why care about this? Why I have an opinion about this? Something that's meant to grab the people reading this for the people listening to this opinion. Now, again, this is more often related to presentations. Very good idea to use a hook at the beginning to grab people in some way. So if you wanted to use a hook, you could put it there. Maybe it's a rhetorical question. Maybe it's just something to think about. Maybe it's making it personal, saying my relationship to this person or this issue and why I care about it. Okay, fine. Then I'm going to say what I'm going to talk about. Now for my outline, I won't write the whole paragraph. I may write one sentence that gives me a clear idea about how I'm going to start, or a sentence that represents my main point. What point do I want to make here? How do I want to state my main opinion? Alright, Now what am I going to do after that? I'm going to spend some time. I'm going to make some paragraphs to support my main opinion. My first opinion is this a I use a you can use one. It doesn't really matter. Whatever works for you. Okay, I'm going to state my main point, just a couple of words to express it. Then I'm going to provide or think of an example that I feel supports that main point. This doesn't have to be an example. It could be a detailed explanation. Just think of it as some kind of support, like we talked about earlier. Example two doesn't have to be two examples. Sometimes it's one example, then you really explain it and you talk about exactly how that supports this. Remember we talked about paragraph structure building paragraphs. Well, maybe it's just that, maybe it's how this example supports this point that I'm trying to make and I want to make it very connected. Now you can see, oh yes, I see how that example really supports your opinion here that this person is this, and therefore it should be this, right? Okay, Then I have another one. Maybe I give another example. Maybe I give two examples. Maybe I have three sentences here. For sentences, I'm not saying how many sentences this should be. I'm saying the content. So I want to explain this example, and I want to explain this example. And then I'm going to connect those back to this point. And again, this point supports this whole thing. The third main point, maybe I have three, maybe I only have to, maybe I have for this is just the example. This one is supported by. Maybe more examples that I have. Maybe they're not examples, maybe support, maybe descriptions, whatever it is, as long as it's clear, as long as it's well-written, impactful, it pops, and it relates to this point so that it feels like when I'm moving through this, ah, I see how these things explain this and how this explains this. I see how these things explain this and how this explains this. I see how these things explained this and how this explains this. So everything is pointing back to something else. And if you think of it that way, as you're doing the outline when you're writing, then you're not stressed out about, well, what do I say next? I don't know if this makes sense when you think about all that in advance. And if you do this process well, you really think through your outline carefully. You really spend some time thinking about it and everything clicks into place, it makes sense. Then the hard part is done. And you get to just focus on building interesting paragraphs that are fun to read, that flow. You get to focus on style, you get to focus on syntax, the stuff that's more enjoyable and not this problem of having to think about both things. What am I going to say and how am I going to say it? It's so terrible. Take that burden off your shoulders. Make that burden part of the first process, this process. Then what you'll find is that the burden of writing is actually a lot lighter. It's a lot more fun, feels a lot more like play. And when you're not sure what to say, just go back to your outline. Oh, yeah, I'm focusing on this. Stick to it. Stick to it. And there's some there's some we call it wiggle room there for sure. You don't have to be a slave to your, to your outline. But if you think through it carefully, you shouldn't want to move away from your outline because your outline makes perfect sense. All you're doing is building out each point with your sentences and your paragraphs. And then as we talked about with the paragraphs, you might want to have a final thought or a final argument. And this is something like what the paragraph that is more clear now, because we've been through all this. This is usually, this is usually a simplified version of this and this is a little subtler. It's a little bit more complicated or nuanced. And this allows you to express something that you could only express once people understand why you think, what you think. So it's your opportunity to really have impact to leave the reader with something to think about an, a context within which to think about it. This is the context, all of this that you've provided. The reader feels like they've moved through your ideas effortlessly. They haven't had to work hard at it. You haven't made it difficult for them. You have interesting points there, well-explained. Their logical. They're in a nice order. Everything is clear and then right at the end, impact a clear statement again, rephrasing or reforming the original point so that their left hopefully with the same conclusion that you have. That's the point of writing what's called persuasive essay is to persuade someone to convince them of your opinion. And if you do it the right way, they will be. So why don't we take a look at this structure in real life? Why don't we take this idea of Victoria and how I feel that she should be chosen for this position. Let's take this and let's outline it. I'm going to show you an outline and we'll talk through that very quickly as well. 51. Outline Example: Let's imagine for a moment that I work in a large organization. Maybe it's a technology company, a tech company. And I've been here for many years, so I'm a manager and people listen to me. People listen to my opinion. Now, there's a new position open in the company. Position is, let's call it head of design. Now, there are different people in the company being considered for this very important role, very high level role in the company. A lot of people want to get this position. Now, some people in the company have opinions about which person should get the job. And I think it should be Victoria. And I have some reasons for that opinion. And I want to get support for that because maybe popular support is important in this organization. People care, the people who will make the decision, care about the opinions of everyone in the company. Okay, So that's the situation. Now, I've decided to write an opinion essay about this and share it via e-mail with everyone in the company or maybe just the management, whatever. Okay. That's what I'm going to do now before I write it, I'm going to outline my ideas so that they're clear and logical. So I'm going to start with what everybody knows. Everybody knows that Victoria and I, we have a long history. We worked together at another company. I've known her for many years. And so I know that when people see that I have an opinion about this, they're going to think that I'm biased and I'm going to use that as a hook to grab people's attention. I'm going to recognize, I'm going to recognize that everyone thinks I'm biased. Then I'm going to say that even though you might think I'm biased, I'm still right, in my opinion. I recognize it and that grabs people's attention. Oh, he's recognizing that. Okay. Maybe I'll really listen now. Maybe I'm really going to pay attention now because of that recognition. So I recognize bias and maybe I'll put that in my outline. I could write beside this, why would you listen to me, someone who might be biased? Because I have a long relationship with this person. Maybe I'll put that there as my hook with bias next to it to remind myself to talk about the bias, then I'm going to state my opinion. I might not write it like this. In fact, I probably won't. I'll try to think of a better way to say it. Victoria should take over as head of design. That's my opinion. This is what I'm trying to support the whole time. Everything I say is about this. I won't say it like this when I actually write it out. I'll probably have a few sentences as part of my first paragraph, as part of my header paragraph. But at least now I know in that header paragraph, in that first paragraph what I am going to say, okay? Alright, so that's at least clear in my mind. Good starting point. Then I want to focus on two main ideas. I want to focus on two main things, and I'm going to support both of those things, either with an explanation or an example. So I'm going to talk about all of her experience, and I'm going to choose two specific examples that highlight why her experience is relevant. Why people should care. Some people have experienced and they're still idiots. But some people because they have experienced, they know they're wise, have intelligent opinions about things, they have good judgment. So I'm going to mention her work at Apple. She used to work at Apple and she made some great contributions there. I know about some of the products that she worked on. That's amazing. I'm going to talk about that. And also, if Apple hired her to work on that, surely she has the experience to be the head of design, right? Then I'm going to talk about her foundation. Maybe she started a small foundation or organization that's meant to help people. Maybe it's design-related. Maybe it's about early childhood education and design. I don't know. Whatever it's about. If you're going to start something like that on your own. Shows initiative. It shows that you can think big picture. It shows that you know how to create a structure and organization and build teams around that structure. That's what it shows. It shows leadership, the kind of thing you'd need to have as the head of design. Okay. So these two things, they're supporting my point that her experience makes her qualified for this job. Next, she's an effective leader. Okay, Now that could be experienced, but I want to focus on the leadership part. Head of design. Leadership, very important. I want to focus specifically on a feature roll-out example. Maybe a couple of years ago we worked together on something. I was really impressed by how well she did that, maybe during that period or during that project when we work together, everyone felt, including me, empowered. Like they were excited to come to work. They knew that they could bring their best ideas. We knew that those ideas wouldn't just be cut down and immediately blocked or rejected. Because, why? Because Victoria is a great leader and she knows how to bring the best ideas out of people, how to empower people. Very good example, I'll talk about that. And also what she did in 2017. Maybe she understands how to measure success. You can't just do something and say, Oh, we did it. You have to know if it worked or not. So we have some actual growth that we measured, that we can measure. So we can see, Wow, she did this and look what happened. Maybe revenue or whatever, some kind of measurement that makes it totally clear that she knows how to do this. She knows how to create a vision. And not only that, we know that she achieved that vision because there are the numbers. And also, Wow, she knows how to motivate others, not just to do good work, but make sure that that good work Finally helps the business grow and is in line with the vision of the business. Okay, Wow, sounding pretty compelling, right? So if I wrote this out following my outline structure, I think whoever is reading this would at least be thinking really seriously about Victoria. Maybe she yeah, maybe she is the most qualified. I might be convincing people, bringing them over to my side. So I'm going to restate, restate my initial idea and this one, I actually write it out. I'm going to try to say in a way that reflects all the things that my reader has learned through these points and examples. Hopefully it's a bit more nuanced than this initial opinion. It's the same thing, but set in a different way. Many people feel the same way and the best option for the future is Victoria. I'm going to explain it in a different way. Of course. I'm not saying I'll use these words, but I want to get these general ideas across. So this is just an example, but it's a great exercise to do. So. Give yourself a topic. Think about something related to work or school. Choose something pretty simple. I suggest that you make it an opinion. The reason I suggest you make it an opinion is that you have to support an opinion. Descriptions easily fizzle out there, often simple paragraphs, unless you're writing a whole story, which is a different case than it goes from one to the next. But a great way to practice. And what most native English speakers do in middle school and high school and even university is write essays about their opinions. And when you say your opinion and you have to support it, you're forcing yourself to always think about the structure of your paragraph and the structure of the entire essay. So it's really a powerful way to develop the real skills of writing, including all the things, all the tools, the brushes we've talked about up to this point. This is a way to apply all of those things practically in the real-world. So just choose a topic, choose an opinion, and practice outlining it. Don't even start writing it yet. Just practice your outline skills. Because if you get good at it, if you can outline quickly, then it won't be a big deal. No problem making an outline. Simple, easy, it takes 2 min. Then you can begin the work, the fun work of writing out your essay, which I think is really the most fun part. And that is what we're going to focus on in the next lesson. So I'll see you there. 52. Essays and How to Practice: In the next section of the course, I'm going to give you specific things you can do, exercises to improve your writing. We're also going to talk about topics that you can use for writing exercises to practice writing essays. But before we get into that, I just want to give you a general approach for practicing essays. How do you actually do this process? You know, about outlining, you know, about structure, but what's the right process? What are the right steps? So let's just talk about that big picture before we get into those specifics in the next section. So what's the right way to approach an essay when you're practicing paragraphs and sentences, it really is just little exercises that you're doing to improve your writing skills, maybe your syntax or grammar and so on. And that's great. But when you're writing an essay, and I'm calling it an essay could be a blog post, something longer, where you're expressing something about yourself. And it has a real structure to it. There's a flow of ideas. You're creating something in the world. At least. That's a good way to think about it. That really helps me if I'm doing something. And I think of it as just, Oh, this is a little exercise that I'm doing and then it'll be done and I'll throw it away. If I think of it like that, I won't take it seriously. What I like to imagine when I'm writing e.g. an opinion essay. What I like to imagine is that the whole world is going to read this when I finish it, when it's perfect, it's going to be published and then somehow it's going to go viral and millions and millions of people are going to read it. Am I going to feel proud of what I've done? Or am I going to think I wish I had spent more time on it? If I had known millions and millions of people, we're going to read it, I would've spent a little more time working on it. So think of it like that, even though nobody may see it, maybe nobody sees it, or maybe just a few people still think about this as something unique that you're making for the world. This is your mark on the world. This essay that you're writing is the thing that people will remember about you in 1,000 years. Wow, if you look at it that way, then I better really spend time on it and think about it carefully because this is me. I'm taking part of my brain and putting it out there. I want to make sure I do a good job. This way of thinking about it really helps me to take it really seriously. And it may be able to help you if that doesn't work for you, that's okay. But having a little bit of pressure is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing. Often when we just do something and we know no one will see it, we have to do it. But if we have this idea that Millions of people will see it, then it's going to put us in a different frame of mind and we'll approach it differently. And that can really impact the quality and the level of seriousness that we put into it. So think about it this way. And if you feel a slight feeling of pressure, that's good. That's a good thing. You want that feeling of pressure because that's what's going to push you to constantly improve to be at the edge of your abilities. Now, what about choosing a topic? As I mentioned, we're going to talk about that more later in the course. And I'm going to give you a lot of topics that you can choose from. But generally, if you're thinking about what to write about, simply ask yourself what you care about. What do you have strong opinions about? If you're interested in sports, then find something related to sports or in sports that you have a strong opinion about. And choose that as a topic. That's all you have to do. What do I care about? Sports, history, politics, whatever? And then inside of that category, what do you have a strong opinion about? Okay, well, I really care about the debate between these two athletes. And I don't like when people say that that athlete is better than this athlete. And I think that this athlete is better. So that's a perfect topic. You have a strong opinion about that great politics, whatever, whatever. So as a simple way to choose a topic, just ask yourself those two questions. The thing you're interested in is the big circle. And then the things you have strong opinions about those are little circles inside of the big circle. And usually you'll have a lot to say about those things which make them good topics. But to start out, when you're doing essays to practice, I recommend that you use opinions. Don't just describe something, don't just explain something. If it's just an explanation and explanations are fine. But if it's just that. Sometimes it's easy to give up to stop carrying or to not be able to find enough material related to this. But if it's an opinion, something you feel strongly about, you will definitely have enough stuff to write about. Enough examples that you can use when you're doing your outline. So then that leads us to the actual steps in the process. You choose your topic, the main thing you're going to write about for this essay. And then you make your outline as we've talked about, you know how to do that. Then if you're happy with it and maybe go out for a walk after you've finished your outline. You don't have to start right away. Look at the clouds and listen to some music. Think about it. Come back to it. Revisit your outline. Is this good? Is this clear? Yes. I'm happy with this. Maybe I've tried two different versions, then take that and use it to start writing. But you're not writing the final thing. You're writing a draft. A draft as a non final version, it's just your first version. Often we call that a first draft, which suggests that it's not final, or a rough draft, which is really not final. Maybe wait a day, take a break, go out for another walk, come back to it, think about it some more. Sit down, look at it and oh, I can make an improvement there. I can change the syntax here. This example should be first. I don't really like my conclusion. Whatever it is, make changes. You could start over or you could just work individually inside of your paragraphs. That's okay. But the important thing is for this part that you are playing with it, this process is a process of play. Then you repeat it. So you have a second draft, but I'm not quite happy with that. It just doesn't flow. It doesn't seem like me. It doesn't quite fit my style. I want to say it differently. I'm not happy with it. Okay. Keep going. You repeat this as a two-step process that goes around and around until you're pretty happy with it. Finally, it feels right. My fourth draft, my eighth draft, whatever it is, when you're really happy with it, you're honest with yourself and you're really happy with it. Then call it your final draft. Let's call that the final draft. Now that doesn't mean that's the final, final draft. That's just the last thing that you have before you show it to someone. So you have a friend, you have someone else who's working on their English. You have a writing partner, which is a great thing to do by the way. And you give it to them and say, Hey, please give me feedback on this, and I'll give you feedback on your writing. This is a great thing to do. If a writing partner, maybe you have the same prompt. Which athlete is better? You take one position, I'll take the other. Okay, great. Now you write yours, alright, mine. The due date is Thursday. Final drafts are due on Thursday. Then we'll check each other's work. And really, this is the opportunity for you to judge someone else's writing to see how someone else expresses themselves, to look at objectively someone else's work, which is by the way, a great habit to get into. They're doing the same for yours. Then when you see the notes that they made on yours, you realize, oh, yes, I could have done it that way. Yes, they were right about that or I don't quite agree with that. I don't think they understood what I was trying to do, but at least it's a process of someone's seeing it objectively and using their subjectively. This process is really great because it helps you to see your own work more objectively and to make improvements on things that you didn't notice about your own writing? I didn't notice that. And by the way, this is not just correction. This is suggestion about style. This is structure. This is all of it. It's not just about, oh, you have an error here. Oh, you misspelled that word. No, no, no. It's about the whole thing. Is it good? And how could it be better? So that's a great reason to have a writing partner or at least to have someone who can read it. Because that also gives you a little pressure. Who? I better make this as good as possible because someone's going to read this. Maybe they'll secretly publish it on the Internet and it does get millions of views. Are you going to feel proud of it? Or are you going to feel ashamed? You want to feel proud. Wow, that's actually really good. The reason it got millions of views is because it's good. People agree with me. Or maybe people disagree. But at least I explained my point clearly. And this is what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. So that's just a big picture view for how to approach essays. In the next section, as I mentioned, we're going to be getting into a bit more detail, specifically how to practice and some exercises that we can do to work on some of the skills that we've learned so far. So I'll see you in the next one. 53. Short Variations: Up until this point in the course, we've been very focused on building the skills that you need to improve your writing, getting those tools in the tool belt, getting those paint brushes. And that's very important. And we focused a little bit on practice. I've given you some exercises to do after looking at most of our examples. And I hope, I hope that you've been working on those. But we need to spend some time focused specifically on practice in this lesson and the next few lessons, That's what we're going to be doing. But why, why do we need to focus specifically on exercises, on practice? Because in order to have the tools at hand, in order to have the paint brushes ready. Whenever you want to use them. You have to build strong habits. You can't just learn something and then kind of remember that thing I learned in that course six months ago. What was it? No, that's not nearly enough. We have to take all of that and we have to apply it so that we can actually have the habits to use those tools, to use those brushes whenever we need them. All. I have to write an email or I have to write an essay. I'm going to write a blog, whatever they're there. But if you want them to be there, you have to really do the work. You have to take that knowledge and apply it. It's gotta be regular, it's gotta be frequent. So we're going to start in this lesson with a pretty general way to practice, but also a very, very useful way to practice. And then in the next couple of lessons, we're going to get down into the details a bit and focus on some specific exercises that are actually quite powerful. Okay, so let's talk about variations. You know what a variation is. We've talked about it before. This is where you take something that's already there and you say that same thing, you write that same thing in a different way, in different words. Now why would we do this? We're going to look at some examples, of course, but why should we do variations and how exactly should we do them? Well, let's focus on why first, why, why in the world? Well, most importantly, perhaps variations are important for flexibility, for creativity and for applied learning. So let's talk about each of these. Flexibility is the ability to change, to adjust based on the situation, based on what's going on. Well, I've said it this way, but it doesn't seem right in this situation. So maybe I'll try saying the exact same thing a different way or a different way, or a different way or a different way. I'm in a social situation with my friends. I'm in a formal situation. I'm sending an email, writing a blog, I'm giving feedback to a friend. These are all different situations and there are 1 million others. We have to be flexible. If you're not flexible, you're not able to choose different ways to express yourself. Then your reader is going to feel that your writing is going to feel limited. And in fact, this is also true about speaking. You're speaking is going to feel limited. So forcing yourself to try different ways to say the same thing is actually extremely powerful. You know that you have to make several variations of this short paragraph of the sentence. Of these two sentences. You know, you have to do a few. So now you have to think about how, how can I say that in a different way? Oh, maybe I could try that. Maybe I could try that different things or I'm not sure. Let me do some research. Let me look up a few words. Let me look up some phrases. Let me watch a video. Let me think about it. Let me take in some information. Let me read my book, whatever I'm reading, let me read an article. So you have to learn stuff. And that's going to help you become more flexible as well. So that's the applied learning part. So this is very powerful. You have to be flexible if you want to be able to write well and express yourself in different ways. Doing variations is a powerful way to do that. Applied learning is, I'm not quite sure how to do it in many different ways. So I'm going to look up some ways and I'm going to try to use those. I'm going to do some research, I'm going to do some reading, and I'm going to use what I learned in my variations. That's great. That's a powerful way to remember what you learned. But also, and this is more general, this is more abstract, okay? Creativity. Creativity is so important, especially when it comes to writing. The ability to think of an idea for how to say something a new way. It's not only about looking things up, It's about thinking, wait a second. If I put this, if I made this one huge sentence, that would seem like this. Or I can make these three short sentences and that would seem like that. And to think of these ideas using the tools that you've learned using good syntax. Using interesting punctuation and clauses, dependent clauses and independent clauses. Using what you've learned so far and everything else you learned using interesting phrases, using new words. All of these things combined in this process of how do I say exactly what I wanted to say? And just doing that process, although it sounds a little fuzzy, just doing that process often and forcing yourself through it is going to push you and you're going to get better at it. And it's going to start to feel natural. And creativity, even if you don't consider yourself to be a creative person, is going to become one of the things that's doable for you. If you are creative, that's great. You should have a bit of a headstart. So these are all tied together. If you learn to be more creative, to think creatively and abstractly, then you're going to be more flexible and have many different ways to say what you want to say. And if you need many different ways to say what you want to say, you may need to do some learning, which you can then apply when you're writing creatively. And by the way, when I say creative writing, I don't mean writing a magical story. That's fine too, but I mean, any situation, you have to apply, creativity. And that might sound like a hey, uh, creativity. I don't know about that. I don't know any rules for creativity. That's right. We're not in the territory of rules. When we talk about creativity, we're in the territory of practice or in the territory of habits, were in the territory of thinking and applying the things that we've learned in a way that isn't defined by clear rules, you have to get comfortable with that. We are beyond. That's right, That's wrong. We're way past that right now. And we're in the area of what is a really, really good way, really clear and concise way to say this thing. That's where we are. That's what we're working on here. And also, also variation is a powerful way to change your attitude toward what good English can look like. It's very easy to see a sentence in a book and say, Well, that's just how it is. That's just how people say that thing. Don't accept that. That's one way to say that thing. There's one other extremely important thing that you can get and develop when you do variations. We'll talk about that in a second. But first, let's just explore this a little bit. We could say, I was tired. How does that feel? Well, do you mean that physically or mentally or emotionally? You could mean that in all kinds of different ways. That doesn't mean it's wrong, it's fine. But unless it's part of a bigger context, it's hard to know exactly what that means. Okay, well, let's explore that a little bit. Now it's time to do variations. Now it's time to play. So variations, I could barely move. I was so exhausted. Alright, so that's physical and that's extreme tiredness. Very, very tired. So maybe I just did something that was very strenuous. Maybe I played tennis all day or something like that. That's a little bit more vivid. It's more active. And it gives me a clear sense of how tired you are trying to move my arm and I got so tired. I felt like a wet rag. This is a different way of saying it. Now this doesn't really suggest that I was doing something athletic, maybe I was. But it could also be that I'm just not feeling very well. And so I'm kind of weak or fatigued for that reason. Flat on the floor like a like a wet rag. And so I felt like what rag is a great way to say that it's another way to say, I was tired probably is going to be physical. My brain was mush after such a long day. Alright? So now we know that this, my brain was much, much as like mashed potatoes. My brain was much means I did something mentally strenuous, mentally difficult. Maybe I had a 16 h a day. Maybe a bunch of people were asking me questions. Maybe I was outside talking to people all day, telling people things, explaining things, whatever reason, whatever it was. Maybe I filmed for 9 h in a row, something like that. My brain was much after such a long day. Physically, maybe I'm fine. But mentally, I can't even think straight anymore. If you asked me a question. I just I just want to I just want to relax. I just want to watch a movie. Okay. Asked me later, my brain is mush right now. Okay. I was totally beat. Now usually this is physical. But it could be a combination of both. Maybe you're physically and emotionally exhausted or drained. Maybe you're physically and mentally drained. So this one could be both. And this one could be both. It could be both as well. That workout destroyed me. Wow. Okay. Another one. These all mean very tired and by the way, yes, I write these. But there are so many more I could do. I could keep doing this for 4 h. We don't wanna do that. I'm just trying to give you an idea. Hey, this is play. This is all about play. This is about you learning to be creative, flexible and applying what you learn to say the thing you want to say. That workout destroyed me. Oh, that's an that's a creative way of saying it. Instead of saying I feel tired after my workout, That's fine. I was tired after my workout. But that's a very direct. It's very direct. It's very straight. Okay. I understand. But if I say that workout destroyed me, it feels different. I'm making the workout like a terrible monster. I haven't worked out for three months. And then I did a workout. We did a workout together. We went to the gym. We did the treadmill, we did the weights. We did a spin class. We did all these things 3 h at the gym. Maybe you're used to it. Great, but I'm not used to it. It destroyed me. That makes it very extreme. And which one do you think is more vivid? That workout destroyed me or I was very tired after my workout. While there's nothing wrong with saying I was very tired after my workout, I think this is a lot more vivid. And again, there are 100, 1,000, 1 million. Other ways to say the same thing. Maybe not 1 million. I mean, I don't know the number. But the point is, you have to be creative and think about it from a new angle. And that's really the key to doing variations. The key to doing variations is to think in a different way about this, whatever it is that you want to say. And that's really what you get from doing Variations. Yes, you get flexibility. Yes, it forces you to be more creative. Yes, applied learning. But really it's helping you unlock, unlock a new way of thinking. If you haven't done this already, a lot of people, they see something written down and there it is, That's it, That's how it's said. Okay. This is forcing you, forcing you to try different ways to play around. And so it unlocks you from this way of seeing it as, Oh, that's the only way. And now you start thinking, okay, That's one way. But I could say it another way. I could say it another way. I could say it another way. I could say it another way. And what you find is when you take on this perspective, when you start to see things with this attitude, this attitude of hey, that's just one way of doing it, okay? Just one way. When you start to do that and see things that way, you're writing is going to take a big jump. Because you're going to start seeing different ways of saying what you wrote before. Because you're going to look at your first draft and say to yourself, Hey, you know what? If I just maybe got rid of that and totally changed it and tried a few new things that I've recently learned and maybe added a couple of clauses here and a sentence there that could be really, really stick out, that can be really impactful, that can be really interesting. So now you start to see yourself more as an artist, which is what I keep saying. You start to see yourself more as a creative artist, sculpting your words to fit what you want to say, your intention, which then leads to clarity, which leads to you being understood very well. So that is the power of doing variations. Now, we're going to look at a slightly longer example before we do that just quickly. How, how? Well, this is pretty simple. You choose a sentence or sentences. Or if you really want to try it, a paragraph. And you read through it carefully to make sure that you completely understand it. You fully understand it. I know what this means. Okay? Maybe that requires you to learn something. Maybe you have to look up a word. Maybe you have to figure out some grammar to understand something or a phrase, a new phrase. So that's very useful. You've learned something in context, Great. The context is wherever you got it from. And it doesn't really matter. Take it from a novel, take it from a non-fiction book, an article, as long as it's correct. Generally. That's okay. It doesn't really matter where it comes from and as long as you understand it at the end, okay? Then you try to write that same thing in different ways. Tried to do it in three or four different ways. Try three or four variations of your original sentence, sentences or paragraph. And there are no rules other than the basic rules of grammar and writing. I mean, there are no rules about how to say it or using certain words or what exactly you should do. We want to use one sentence, make it a longer sentence. Do you want to keep it mostly the same and play around with your syntax? Maybe take two sentences and make them one sentence. Okay, great. Do you want to focus on a completely different angle that makes it a little more interesting like this one. I was tired or that workout destroyed me. This is definitely an interesting angle, talking about the workout like a kind of terrible monster that killed me recently because I did the workout. Now, you want to still make sure your sentences are correct. You wanted to still use the rules of grammar. But it's important that you try different things and don't make all three or four of your different variations almost exactly the same as each other. No. You're free. Play around. Stretch yourself, push yourself to do something new, something different. Think creatively. That's the only way that you're going to get into the habit of being flexible. That's the only way that you're going to be able to apply more of what you've learned. So it's very important that you try to make your variations very different. Like many of these are very different. This, and this very different. So focus on that. Okay. That's how you do it. It's that simple. I recommend setting up a period of time to do variation practice. Maybe 20 min in the morning, maybe 30 min in the evening. But if you take it seriously, you're going to make a lot of progress. Alright, just to make sure that you've got this, we've done some short sentences. Let's take a look at some slightly longer variations so that you can see what those would look like. 54. Full Variations: We looked at some very short variations of I was tired. But let's take a look at something a little longer. And this can help us see how we might do variations for longer text, whether it's one sentence or two or more. And it's really up to how much time you have and what you feel you need to work on most, if you're most focused on the structure of each sentence and making sure it's clear. Maybe just one at a time. That's okay. If you're more focused on the flow of the whole paragraph, making sure you have good syntax throughout the paragraph. Maybe it makes more sense to take something with three or four or maybe five sentences. Generally doing longer variations is not a great idea because it starts to lose its point. The point is to force you to have flexibility and think creatively. Otherwise, you're kind of just writing your own composition based on the general ideas. So let's take a look at this. Elsa, who had recently accepted an offer from a local school, assuming that it was her only option. Got the news that she had been offered a full scholarship from Harvard. So this is what we're doing, a variation of. How could we do it. Elsa was getting ready to attend a local college when she got the offer from Harvard with a full scholarship. Alright, that's another way to say it. Elsa got a full ride to Harvard. She was planning to attend a local school, but then the admission letter came. Now this one's interesting because this one might focus on Harvard more. So this one might focus on the fact that it came from this school and that's what happened. And that's the big thing, that's what we care about. And this is more of an explanation of the context. Afterward, she was planning to attend another school. It's not as important as, Hey, look, she got a full ride to Harvard. So depends on the focus we want to have. Again, we could keep playing with this. What about getting crazy? What about doing a dialogue between Elsa and her friend? Sure. Why not? I'm Michelle says, are you going to cranberry cakes in August? That's the made-up school name that I made cranberry cakes. Elsa says, you haven't heard. I was going, but then I got admitted to Harvard. And Michelle says, You must be joking. Elsa says, it's crazy, right? I got a full scholarship to. So this is just another perspective, but it is the same thing. It's just one person saying it to another. You could turn it into a short story that's two paragraphs long. You could try to condense it down into an extremely short sentence. Play with it. Have fun with it. Do it how you want to following the general rules of grammar and punctuation. Try it out. Let me know how it goes. Find a sentence, find some sentences together, or find a paragraph, gets started, budget time for it. If you have any questions, let me know and I will see you in the next lesson. 55. Replacement Exercise Steps: Doing variations, as we talked about in the last lesson, is very important. It's a very powerful way to improve your writing overall, to improve your creativity, your flexibility. And that's great. You should be doing that. But what if you want to focus on more specific things? E.g. what if you went to improve your sentence structure? I want to learn these sentence structures. Specifically, how do I do that? Well, that's what the replacement exercise is all about. So in addition to improving your flexibility, the replacement exercise is going to help you learn new sentence structures. And that of course, includes grammar. That includes syntax. But what do I mean exactly by learn? Well, it's not just taking in something new. To learn something really is to take it in and to be able to use it when you need it. That's what I mean by Learn. So in order to learn new structures, you have to practice using them. And not in quite as freestyle away. As we talked about with variations. There are a few steps. And we're going to talk about the steps and look at examples. But in addition to improving your flexibility and your use of different structures for making sentences, you're going to get something else. And that is an intuition. This exercise is going to improve your writers intuition. This is also sometimes called your instinct. Now what is that? Intuition? Instinct? What exactly does that mean? Well, it is kind of abstract. But when you see a really clear, really nice sentence, you say to yourself, Wow, that is nice. I'm not quite sure why. I can't quite put it into words, but that's definitely good. It's good. Okay. Well, you can't quite put into words why it is, but you know it is. And so when you're writing something, how do you know? That is very clear. I'm going to use this. How do you know that that's better than that when they're both correct. They're both grammatically correct. So how do you know that this one is way better than that one? Well, maybe it's more clear. Maybe it more accurately captures how you feel. But it's not really a science, it's not a yes or no answer. It's a feeling. And it's especially a feeling that starts to develop as you get better and better. But as you get better and better, that feeling gets harder and harder to explain or describe. If you see a master at something, an artist working, you say, How are you doing that? What are you doing there so good they've been working for so many years, so many years of training and practice and working that they'll just say, I don't know. It just seems right. It is right. It's great. It's genius. But why? I don't know, I don't know. That's the land of instinct. That's the land of intuition. We want to get closer to that. And as you get better, as you begin to master the English language, more, you'll start to develop this instinct as you read, as you continue to practice, as you work on your own writing, as you refine it, as you continue working on it, you may find yourself saying to yourself, I really like what I just made. I really like what I wrote. But I don't know why I don't know why. That's okay. Because again, if you ask the master artists, what did you do, they'll also say, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm just kinda following my instinct. If you see a figure skater on the ice doing an amazing figure skating routine, they're way beyond just being technically good. There. Figure skating is a form of art. And that's what we're going for. And I know that sounds kind of magical and that sounds a little bit abstract. But it is kind of magical. It is kind of abstract. The better you get at something, the harder it is to explain. Think about something you're really good at. Could you train someone to do that thing in a day or two as well as you do it? No. They would have to watch you for a long time and study you. And you wouldn't be able to probably explain everything that you do because you've done it so much, you have so much practice. It's just automatic. You're a master of that, whatever it is. I want you to become a master. Of writing. I want you to be a great writer. Okay? So that's what this exercise is, also going to help you with. Your flexibility, your ability to use structures, and your intuition or instinct for what is good. So let's now talk through the four steps of the replacement exercise. This has four steps. We'll talk through them. Then we'll look at some examples. Step one, choose a challenging sentence or paragraph with an interesting structure. Now, this should be a sentence or paragraph that really is challenging. When we talked about doing variations, It's not like this. You can choose something pretty simple. Because the exercise is to just say that in a bunch of different ways in practice that, that's practicing one thing, okay? Your creativity, your flexibility, especially this, is to actually learn the structure. So it's important that it's kind of difficult for you. It doesn't have to be one sentence. Maybe it's a short paragraph. That's fine too. It should be something that you have to read a couple of times to completely understand. Not like Bob likes robots, Bob legs robots. Well, is that structure interesting or challenging? Know, I can say Randy likes robots, Denise likes robots, Okay? I can say Bob hates robots. I could say Bob needs robots. Okay, that's not very interesting. Bob likes dinosaurs, Bob likes pizza. You can swap these things out. It's not very interesting. You're not learning a lot from this, this, I would describe as basic and I'd like you to choose something that you feel is more advanced. Something more advanced so that you're actually learning from it and something you don't already know that's new. What's this? Haven't seen this before. I'd really like to be able to use this. If you have that feeling and it's a little challenging, It's probably good. Okay. So you chose one time to move on to step two, look up words, and I'll say phrases, idioms, whatever you don't know, and any new grammar. So maybe you see something you're not sure what that is. Try to look that up. Try to figure out what's going on there without grammar. Until you understand it 100%, you need to have after you really study it, 100%, 100% understanding. Because if you don't have that, then you can't go on to step three. So these steps are very important. You've got to choose something that's hard enough. Then you have to make sure you understand it. This is a learning process. Then you're going to immediately apply what you've learned that you did step two. So that's the power of these steps. You do step three, which is to simplify sentence, paragraph, but keep the structure in place. Now what does that mean exactly to simplify? Well, maybe there are two or three adjectives in front of a noun. Do you really need all of those to have the whole meaning? Maybe not, maybe remove those. Maybe there's a verb that's unneeded, maybe remove that. Maybe something is said in a way which is a little too complicated. So generally try to rephrase it so that it's a little simpler. What you're trying to do when you simplify is get the sentence or paragraph down to its bones. Still has a meaning. It still makes sense. It still has to make sense. But you're trying to get rid of the excessive stuff that doesn't have to be there to make it make sense, to still maintain the structure overall. And if that doesn't make sense right now, it's okay. I'm just telling you step three. I don't expect you to really get it until we look at the example. So we want to simplify. In step three. We prove we understand this by simplifying it. Because if you don't understand it, how can you simplify it? You can't simplify something you don't understand. You can't know what words are not necessary if you don't understand what this means. So it forces you to completely understand it. It gives you a little bit of pressure. Hey, don't go to step three unless you're really know that you've got step to correctly. Now we go to step four. In step four, we keep the structure and completely replace the meaning. Then you can, if you want to repeat step for maybe two times, maybe three times depending on how much time you have, maybe depending on how long your text is. If you're doing a longer paragraph, might take a little bit longer. So maybe just do it twice. If you're doing something pretty short, which can be good as well, then maybe do three, maybe do more. And by repeating step for what you're doing is learning this structure deeply, building a habit. Building a habit. So that you really understand how to use this structure. Then when you're writing something else, you remember, oh yeah, I could use that here. This would be a good place to use that structure that I practice three or four times last week. And as you continue doing this, you expand your library of different sentence structures that you can use and it gets bigger and bigger. But you don't forget it because you practiced it because it's a habit. Why do teachers assign homework in school? Because repetition works. They don't just tell you things in class and then say, Okay, we're done. See you tomorrow. They say, do ten of these. See you tomorrow? I'm saying do three of these or do two of these at least. Because I want you to, I want you to really learn the structure and I want you to remember the structure. And if you can remember the structure that you've learned, all the structures that you've learned as you continue reading, because you're probably pulling these out of things that you're reading. As you do this, you start to develop that intuition. That instinct. Oh yeah, this is definitely the right place to use that. I don't know why if you asked me why, I couldn't tell you. I'm not sure. I just know. Okay. I just know it's right. That's what you want. That's what we're working toward. Okay. So now that we've got the steps, choose a challenging paragraph. Make sure you understand it, 100%. Simplify it. Make it simple, but maintain the structure. Finally, create several compositions using that structure so that you can master it. Let's look at some examples. 56. Getting Down to the Bones: I'm really curious to see if the structure we look at in this example is familiar to you. It should be. But let's, let's take a look. So we start with step one. Step one, this is from a text. Maybe we got it from an article, maybe it's from a book, whatever. It doesn't matter. Okay, so here's our original text. Mike, who had spent almost $1 million on an underground bunker fearing some world ending catastrophe, discovered that the most likely future threat was coded into his DNA. Alright, well, step one, complete, it's challenging. Now, step two, remember step two is to make sure we understand what's going on. So okay. I'm not sure about this word catastrophe. What does that mean? Okay, So I looked that up and catastrophe, right? How about world ending? Ooh, nice. Compound adjective. Very nice, very nice. Alright, that's the end of the world as an adjective, got it. And coded into his DNA. I need to understand this phrase here, coded into his DNA. Alright, try to understand that. Now I'm not going to go over the whole meaning. That's not why we're here. This is just the example so that we can see the steps. Alright? Now I also want to pay attention to the way the grammar is being used. I want to pay attention to the structure. Now, I remember we learned about relative clauses. If we have a Who here and it's got some extra information. But it's not a sentence by itself. It's a dependent clause. Who had spent almost $1 million on an underground bunker. Not a complete sentence. I remember that that could be connected to a main subject or a noun of some kind to add detail to it, but could also be removed and wouldn't destroy the sentence relative clause. I also remember learning that I could put a comment between two commas just to kind of, by the way thing. And that if I did that, I could also remove it and not destroy the sentence. So does that mean that I could take out all of this, starting with who? And then here, all the way to catastrophe. Does that mean I can just remove that? And there would still be a sentence, an independent clause in place. Let's see. Mike discovered that the most likely future threat was coded into his DNA. Wow, it's a complete sentence. We could remove all of that. Very interesting. So here I have the relative clause with who. I could also use which there if it were a thing. And then I have a comment which is also between two commas and used in a very similar way to the relative clause. There's no Who, but it's similar in a lot of ways and it's additional added information. Alright, this is very interesting. So now when I simplify this, I'm going to try to keep this basic structure. I'm going to do a subject, then I'm going to use the relative clause. And then I'm going to add a comment that simpler. And then I'm going to complete the sentence. That would be a complete sentence directly after the subject. That sounds a little complicated, but that's what, that's what I'm going to try to do. Okay. Play around with this mic. This is step three. Now we're on step three to prove to ourselves that we did step to completely. Now we do step three to strip it down to simplify it to its bones. But still, it must make sense. Mike, who had spent a lot of money on a bunker, who had spent almost $1 million on an underground bunker. Okay, this is just an additive. Get rid of that. Bunkers are usually underground. $1 million. Okay. It's a lot of money. I'm just trying to simplify it. I'm trying to make it easier. I'm trying to get it down to its basic or more basic form. Okay. So Mike, who had spent a lot of money on an underground bunker, then the comment between two commas we have here, fearing, fearing some world ending catastrophe, world ending. That's a very interesting compound adjective, but is it really necessary? Maybe not. And also catastrophe. It's a complicated word. Can I make it disaster? Same meetings, a little simpler, more common, fearing a disaster. Alright, That works. Mike, who had spent a lot of money on a bunker fearing a disaster. Now, I complete the sentence that starts with Mike here, learned, instead of discovered that the most dangerous threat was in his DNA, was coded into his DNA. Maybe maybe I don't need to say what happened. I just say that it's there. So that's simplifies it, that the most dangerous threat was in his DNA. Okay. So now we have the bones and this whole thing still makes sense. Now it's time to go to step four. When we go to step four, we're going to remove the meaning, keep the same basic structure and replace the meaning with something else. And this, this should be familiar to you because it is actually an example we've looked at before. Do you recognize this? Time for step four? Okay. Elsa Mike. Mike, same thing. Who had recently accepted an offer from a local school who had spent almost $1 million. Very similar. Now we have the comment with an I-N-G to start it, assuming that it was her only option. Elsa, who had recently accepted an offer from a local school, assuming that it was her only option. Then we complete the sentence that would start with Elsa. Elsa got, okay, it also makes sense. Mike learned. Mic, discovered same basic idea, same basic grammar, past tense verb there. Elsa got the news that she had been offered a full scholarship from Harvard, learned that, discovered that, got the news. That. So that is also the same we are trying to include as much as we can of the original structure. Now, she had been offered a full scholarship from Harvard that the most dangerous threat was in his DNA. Yeah, of course, these are quite different, but overall, the whole thing has the same basic structure. We can say that it has the same bones. I like to use the idea of bones to think of how a sentence is put together. And if we look at all three of these closely, we can see that actually they have, they have the same basic bones. Then if you want it to go on and use this for variation like we did in the last lesson. Fine, Great. Go ahead. But to do this exercise, what you would then do is take this again and replace it with a different meaning. Replace it again, replace it again. See if you can do it a few times. This is a great way to practice and remember the structure so that you can use it when you need it. Let's look at one more example of this just to make sure you've really got it. 57. Full Replacement Exercise Example: For this last example of the replacement exercise, let's just look at how step three turns into step four. Now that doesn't mean it will be three. This will be for. Now that does not mean that steps 1.2 are not important. Of course they are. But for the sake of time and for the sake of focusing on what's most important. Let's just, for this one, look at this transformation. I'm going to call it a transformation to transform the meaning while maintaining the basic structure, while maintaining the bones. So let's read through these and see what we can see and see if we have actually followed the structure before the merger announcement. Okay, so we have a prepositional phrase. We learned that right, right there with a comma after it, after the movie. Alright? Prepositional phrase comma after it. So far so good. The heads of each department. Okay, So the heads of each department, that's going to be it's gonna be the subject, right? Okay. A few friends and I, that would be the subject of this one. Alright, so far so good, gathered to make their statements. So that's the verb that these heads of each department, do. They gather together to make their statement, to say something? If we did step to properly, then we should have a good understanding of this. And it should be simpler, at least a little simpler than the original thing that we were looking at. Okay. So they gathered to make their statements, got together to discuss our thoughts. Now it is true that this one is not in this one. This one ends with a noun statements and this would be ending it with a noun thoughts. And that would be okay, discuss our thoughts. But why not add on it just to reinforce the idea that we're talking about. The movie, Just in general. So it's okay to add little things like that. Okay. Each explained how excited they were about the future. Each of us discussed what we liked, what we didn't. Very similar. So each of us, each pretty close. And then we have the past tense verb right after it, explained and disgust, alright? While trying desperately not to show the disappointment on their faces, while doing our best to avoid spoiling anything. For Dennis. Very different meaning, same basic structure. So this is happening. We're discussing our thoughts on the movie, and at the same time, we are doing our best. We don't want to talk about the movie because Dennis hasn't seen it yet. So we can't talk about it too much, not too many details, but we can still share our general thoughts while they're explaining their excitement right at the same time they are trying. So we have an I-N-G and ING, right? They're doing trying. It's an ING because it's happening at the same time right after awhile while tells us that it is at the same time these two things are happening. At the same time. They're trying desperately not to do something we are doing our best to avoid and we also have to avoid. And here we have to show, they have not to show, but it's still same basic structure. We have a two verb and then a two verb. Spoiling anything for Dennis, show the disappointment on their faces now. Okay. That's a little bit different. We don't have the i-n-g That's here in there, but it's okay. Generally it's pretty close. Then we want to end it with a relative clause. Okay? So what's the relative clause? Which was impossible for some who hadn't seen it yet. Dennis hadn't seen it yet. This activity of trying not to show their disappointment was not possible for some, that thing they're trying to do. So these are both relative clauses, but they are quite different. And that is, okay, That is good. You have to give yourself some freedom. You have to remain in the general structure. You have to try to keep the bones as best you can. But you want to give yourself some freedom to play around to try to use this basic structure, these bones in an interesting way. And then we would try to do another one and maybe another one. So that's how it works. Now, I challenge you to start doing this. Find a sentence that's interesting. Find a short paragraph that's interesting, that's challenging. And try to go through these steps. Remember, you're only repeating step for several times. You don't need to repeat the whole thing. Just step four tried to make several different versions and it really depends on a lot of things. How much time do you have? If you don't have much time, 20 min, then maybe choose a shorter one. Choose a sentence that's interesting instead of a paragraph. Okay? Do two instead of three or four, right? So make sure it fits within your life, but also make sure to do it, make time for it. Okay. Every morning. I'm gonna do this for 30 min. That's fine. I'm gonna do this once. And I'm going to do five variations of a couple of things that I'm reading. Very interesting, very good. And when you do this regularly, the important thing is to keep it up to make it a habit, not just get excited about it and do it for three days to keep it up. For weeks, for months. The thing is when you do that, you're going to make real progress. And you're going to look back at yourself from six months before and say, hi. I can't believe, I can't believe I used to write like that. So much more clear now. And as you do that, you're going to gain in confidence as you gain in skill. Good luck. And I will see you in the next lesson. 58. Peer Review Overview: In this lesson, we're going to be talking about peer review. Now, what is peer review exactly? Well, this is when you have someone who's in a similar situation to yourself, also working on their writing. Also an English learner who wants to improve. Someone who's in that kind of situation like you about at your level. Who can check your work and you can check their work. You can check each other's work. And through that process, you can both improve. Now, this is what I would call a writing buddy. We've talked about it a little bit already. But I want to make sure that you have the tools to make sure that if you have a writing buddy, you have the tools and methods that you need to get the most out of that relationship to make sure you're not wasting time. To make sure you're not doing things that are actually causing you to develop bad habits, giving you bad habits to make sure it's really efficient and effective. And we'll talk about that. But first, I want to make sure that we cover all types. So we're also going to talk quickly about the language exchange partner and paid editing. Now, why do I say paid editing? Can't I find a native English speaker? Can't I find a native English speaker who will check my writing for me? Well, I would say, good luck. Very difficult to find someone who's just willing to do something difficult for you for free, right? And also not every native English speaker is automatically good at correcting your work. And I should say here, not only paid editing but also paid corrections. Because often you don't just want edits because if you can't see how the changes were made, then how can you actually improve, right? But if you see the corrections, you see a suggestion here, a line there, then you can see actually how you might, how you might improve. Now can you get a native English speaker to do that for you for free? Well, if you can, good luck, That's fantastic. But I think it's pretty rare. That'd be very hard to find, very hard to find. Now, maybe you've got some friends who are native English speakers. Should you ask them to check your work for you? I would be very cautious about that. Usually, if a friend starts asking for a lot of favors, the other person starts to feel okay. I'm just being used here, aren't I? Am I just being used because I'm a native English speaker? Is this really a friendship? What is this? If it becomes very one-sided, that often doesn't end very well. And I've personally experienced that quite often where I realized, Oh, okay, this person actually just wants to know me so that they can ask me to do things for them and they don't really care about me. So maybe I won't be friends with this person anymore. It's happened many times. So I would recommend just personally, I would recommend not doing that. So that would be if you want really professional editing, a reason to pay for it. If you want all of your writing to be professionally checked. There are many services out there, but you have to pay for it. Okay. So there's that. What about language exchange? Now this is different. Maybe there's a native English speaker who would like to learn to speak your language. Okay, great. If you can work out a situation that is mutually beneficial, you can use the same basic structure that we're going to talk about for the writing. Buddy. Work out an arrangement. Both sides benefit. You give something of yourself and your language exchange partner gives something back to you. And so it's stable. Everyone feels okay. I'm getting something out of this relationship. I'm giving something, but that's reasonable because I'm getting something. This is good. I can continue this. That's great. The difficulty is that a good language exchange partner is kind of hard to find. But if you can, if you can, that's fantastic. If you can, then use the same basic structure as we're going to talk about. For the writing. Buddy. What is the writing buddy? How should you choose one? Well, we're going to talk about the benefits next. But the main idea is, as I mentioned there about at your level, that's very important because if they're way too high, then you won't be able to offer them any good feedback. And if there are way too low, then they won't be able to offer you any good feedback. And it will feel one-sided. For all of these, it's very important that there's a give and a take. Because if there is no give and take, these relationships, these relationships fall down. They collapse usually pretty quickly. So it's important to have balance and a feeling of equality so that nobody feels like they're being used. That's very important. And I only say that because I've seen it happen many times. An unbalanced relationship with two language exchange partners, or to writing buddies, to peers, or someone who's asking for help all the time, from someone who doesn't feel like they're getting anything out of it. I've seen these things break down very often. And so it's really important from the start to make sure with your potential writing buddy. Do you have about the same goals I have? Are you about at my level? Let's try to figure that out. Very important to ask the difficult questions up front before you start. What are your goals? Are you willing to make a commitment? How serious are you to see if this could be a long-term relationship? Because if you're going to make progress, if you're going to really invest in this kind of thing, having a writing buddy, It's essential. It's essential that it's the right person. So don't be afraid to ask tough questions. 59. Benefits of a Writing Buddy: I'd like to just quickly review the benefits of having a writing buddy. And when I talk about these benefits, I'm also including the language exchange partner. The difference would be obviously that the languages are different, but the benefits are mostly the same. So what are they? Perhaps most importantly, is that there is less room for laziness. Think about things that you promise to yourself. For a lot of people, keeping a promise to yourself is more difficult than keeping a promise to others. If you have some external pressure, if you have a little bit of pressure, let's call it pressure. If you're provided with some accountability. If you're being held accountable, that's often a good thing, a positive thing. There's someone outside, there's someone external who can give you a little push and you know that they're waiting for something from you. So you feel that sense of pressure to e.g. really do your final draft the best you possibly can. Because maybe you do your first draft and you correct a couple of things and say, Okay, it's final because you give yourself a break. You allow yourself to be a little bit lazy. But if you feel who somebody is waiting for this, I have to do my best work. I better try my hardest on my second draft. Third draft, final draft, so that it's perfect. Having that pressure outside is a good way to force yourself to not be lazy and to always be striving to do your best and pay attention to the details to really make sure your writing is at its best and buy at its best. I don't just mean avoiding mistakes. We haven't spent a lot of time in this course talking about mistakes. I assume that there aren't many mistakes in your writing. We're talking about good writing, clear writing, this kind of thing. How can you best say what you want to say? To do your best? And to have someone outside is a very powerful thing. Especially if it's on a schedule. Especially if it lasts over a long period of time, like months or even years. If you have a very good relationship with your writing buddy. And both of you are quite serious about what you're doing. That relationship can over a very long period of time be very powerful as a tool to help you improve your writing. Even the best writers in the world have editors. Why do they have editors? The best writers in the world? They don't need editors. They do. They do Because no matter how many times they reread what they wrote, they may have missed something. And by miss something, I don't just mean catching a typo or a mistake by miss something. I mean, I could have said it that way and that would have been more interesting or more powerful or more impactful. It could have been a little more clear there. That's what I mean. And a good editor you're writing buddy is kind of your editor. Kind of a good editor will be able to help you see things that you never would have seen because they are not you. You live inside your head. So it's a little bit difficult to be objective. So just naturally having another pair of eyes on your work. Just to naturally, a different perspective on what you wrote is going to give you a new perspective on your own work. They're going to see things that you might not have seen. They're going to have ideas that you may never have thought of. And very importantly, you're going to have ideas that they never would have thought of. When you see their writing, something that's pretty obvious to you, an obvious improvement that they could make may not have been obvious to them, and something that wasn't obvious to you may be obvious to them. And that's just something that comes out of being different people, having different perspectives, having different ways of thinking. It's natural but extremely powerful. So having that objective perspective then has the added advantage of allowing you to see your own work more objectively. So when you get it back, you see it through your eyes and through their eyes now. Oh yeah, wow, that's a good point. And then you can take those lessons and apply them to your future work, to what you do in the future. That objective perspective may give you a completely new tool to add to your tool belt that you never would have had. Otherwise, and hopefully, as you're improving your writing, you'll be able to notice things that then allow you to give your partner your writing buddy, new tools that they can add to their tool belt. And you'll likely find, this is a very interesting thing. You'll likely find that the more you read when I'm not just talking about your writing buddies work, the more you read in general, the greater sense you have for what seems right and what doesn't quite look right? And that helps your writing buddy because you're going to be able to make recommendations. Who I think if you added a few adjectives here? Well, I think if you may be rephrased this and made this a little bit longer or started in a different way. Or maybe took out some of these simple adverbs and use more interesting action verbs. The more you read, the more of those things you'll be able to offer, and the more you work on your writing buddies work, that means review carefully. You're writing buddies work, go through it with a pen if you want to, or if it's on your computer or wherever, go through it carefully. The more you do that, the better your critical eye for writing will be. You'll start to notice things that you wouldn't have noticed two months ago. Then those also can be things you can begin to apply to your own work. It's sort of like wine tasting. Those people who are really, really good at saying, Oh yes, this is from 1997 in this part of the world. You see that? And you think that's amazing. How do they know that? Well, it's exactly the same when it comes to good writing, clear writing, concise writing, impactful writing. These things will become much more clear to you over time. Start noticing things that you never saw before. Picking up patterns, seeing how things fit together better. And this is not easy to describe. You won't be able to always describe exactly what it is. But you will be able to make good recommendations. And as you help your writing buddy, and hopefully as they develop the same skills and as they help you, both of you can kind of go up together at the same pace, ideally, and continue improving together. So this is really the power of having a good writing buddy. But I want to stress, I want to emphasize that having the right one is critical. If you have one that's not offering you the same as your offering them. If you have a writing buddy who is way too low for you, it's probably not going to work out. It's going to be very difficult to maintain the balance. To feel like, yes, I'm getting something out of this. Are you getting something out of it or are you just giving if you're just giving, how long is this going to last? Four months, five months, until you start to feel exhausted and inconvenienced. If you start to feel that way, notice it. Tried to notice that. Try to make some adjustments or try to figure that out from the start. Because you shouldn't feel that way. It should be a positive feeling when you see their feedback of your work. Wow, very insightful. Why didn't see that? Oh, I can't believe I didn't notice that. And they should feel the same way about your feedback. And if it's not liked that something's off. So work on the balance, work on the relationship. Most importantly, make sure you find the right person. Now you might be thinking, okay, benefits, Great, fantastic, but what's the process? Give me the steps. Okay. So let's go over the steps. 60. The Full Peer Review Process: You've gotta writing buddy. You're excited, you're ready to get started. But how do you actually get started? What's the process? Well, let's talk about that. Now. I'm assuming you have your writing buddy ready to go. Okay. That's what I'm assuming. If you don't work on that, when you do go through these steps, now this can change around a little bit, but generally speaking, this is what I recommend you do as a process with your writing buddy to make sure that the work you're putting in is actually effective, actually helping you improve the quality and clarity of your writing. Now, generally, the first thing you wanna do is decide on the topic or prompt. What are you going to write about? You want to write about the same thing. You want to have a topic or prompt that you're both interested in. Because if one person is not, they probably won't try as hard. They won't put in as much energy if there's research needed. They might not do that because they're not interested. And so the final result is going to feel one-sided. Person, a didn't try, person be tried very hard. That's not really, that's not really fair and balanced. So make sure you really talk about it. Maybe come up with a list of interesting things that you both like, that you would both like to discuss or talk about or write about. And then maybe choose one of those for each assignment. So I'm going to call this step the assignment because I don't know what else to call it. It is what you both are deciding to do. Now. You may be wondering still, okay, but how do I actually write a question or prompt that is engaging and interesting? That's what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. We're going to talk about prompts and how to make them. And I am going to give you a bunch of writing prompts that you can use. If you want to. You can use, you can use the ones that I provide. But for now, let's just go to the next one. Then you need to set the rules or requirements. And this stage is extremely important. Why? Because if you don't have very clear rules, if you don't have very clear requirements that you both agree to, then things can easily get out of balance. She writes a ten paragraph essay, and I wrote two paragraphs. Now I have to check her ten paragraphs and she has to check my two paragraphs. That doesn't sound fun. Make rules, make them a very clear. You might make rules about length. And you can decide how strict those are. Maybe it's, maybe it's three to four paragraphs. Maybe it's three to four paragraphs. Maybe this is a very limited exercise and it's a very short-term thing. And you just do one really clear paragraph about whatever the topic or prompt is, okay? That's fine. But generally speaking, three to four paragraphs is a good length. I'm not saying that has to be the rule. Just make sure you say what the rule is. You can also agree on the style of feedback. Is this going to be edited? Is this going to be edited? What does that mean? Edited may mean that the corrections are made. Now, I would say that that's probably not the best idea. Because if you edit something I wrote and you correct it, am I going to remember everything that I wrote and then know automatically what improvement you suggested. Actually, editing is not a great way to learn. Editing is not a great way to help someone improve. What's better is to make recommendations. Now if you have a physical piece of paper, the classic red pen may work. Okay, so maybe that's the rule. Mark in red pen. Mark in red pen. And that means everything is just a suggestion. If you cross something out with a red pen, it's still there. You can still see it. I can see that you think I should cross that out. And then when I type my final version or my next draft, I can make a decision about whether or not to include your feedback. Or maybe I'll think about it at least and come up with another idea that's even better. So I would suggest using some form, some form of marking that again, does not have to be on a physical piece of paper. It can be, but it could be an online document. And you just select sections and make comments on those selections. Okay. That's fine. Whatever works, the point is, make the rules clearly, make the requirements very, very clear. And the cool thing is, you can include things in the rules that you're both working on. Maybe you're both working on syntax. You're really focused on syntax. Okay? Make a rule. No repeated sentence structures. No repeated sentence structures means for this whole three or four paragraph essay, no sentence can have the same structure as another. Wow. A pretty big challenge, very interesting. That's going to really push me and my writing buddy to be creative, to think about how we can say what we want to say about this prompt. So I'm not telling you what the rules have to be. I'm just saying make sure they're clear and make sure you agree upon them from the start. That way there are no surprises. And you don't have one person doing something very, very different from another. And then having already this feeling of eye rolling tension. You don't want that. You want to have clear rules so that you can maintain the relationship. Very important. Make sure you have clear due dates. This is very important. If you just let this slide. If you let it slide, which means you're not strict about dates, it probably will slide. Probably will do next week. I'll do it next week, maybe in two weeks. Make it clear date, this is our deadline. You want this feeling of pressure, a slight feeling of pressure is a positive thing. So you make a hard date whenever it is, you're gonna give yourselves two weeks, fine. Do it over two weeks. Maybe each assignment is a two-week period. Maybe you're both really busy. People make each assignment over a one-month period. Maybe you are really, really focused on this. Make each assignment one week, okay, fine, That's great. But just make sure you agree on it and make sure you set it and don't ever say it's due whenever because I finished it today. Oh, you're still not done? Oh, you're still not done. Oh, you're still not done. Okay. You're still not done. Okay. Well, when are you going to be done? I'm starting to feel already that this relationship is not quite what I was expecting. And I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one who really cares about this and it's really serious about it. And it might be time for me to start looking for another writing buddy. So a lot of these rules are not just to help you improve, but also to help you maintain that sense of balance and equality in the partnership, in the relationship that you have. You're writing buddy, and it seems like I'm focusing on this a lot. But again, I've seen it happen so many times. It's so, so important to maintain that balance. So then just like there's a due date for the first draft, there should also be one for feedback on the first draft. It's due on Thursday. You need to finish reviewing this and making your marks, are making your comments or however we're going to do that by Monday evening at 06:00 P.M. has to be done. Has to be done. Otherwise, you've broken my trust. Okay? So that's forcing this to happen so that we can continue the process or both done, and then we can both move on. Now, if you have a good relationship with your writing buddy, it may be a good idea to do a feedback review session. What is the value of this? This could be a phone call, this could be meeting in person. This could be a video call or whatever. What is the value of this? Well, this can be really important to explain. To explain things. Hey, you, you wrote a red line through this. Are you mark this? What exactly did you mean by that? Could you explain that a little bit better? I'm trying to understand your feedback. Or maybe the person who made the marc wants to ask some questions about this. I'm just wondering, you wrote you wrote this a couple of sentences about something that seems unrelated to the topic. I'm just curious why that was there. So I so I circled it. Oh, well, actually I was thinking, oh, I see. So you can come to an understanding and better understand how the other person thinks. They can better understand how you think. You can get a clear picture of what the feedback exactly means. You might be able to answer a couple of questions that they can consider when you send your final draft. So it's just a good thing to do, but I would consider this to be optional. So you could do this or not do it. It's up to you, but I think it's a good idea. It definitely is a good idea to spend a little time talking through it. And you can have rules for this too. So there's always ways to adjust this and make it a little different. Then very importantly, you have a final draft due date. Okay. So the feedback was due on Monday. We did our conversation on Tuesday, and then the following Friday, the final draft is due. So I'm spending time working on my second draft, try to make some more revisions and then make a final draft that's as perfect as I can make it. A little pressure because this person is going to help me check it. They're going to be very critical and very careful. Because, because I want them to be because I'm going to be the same way when I look at theirs. Okay? So I'm gonna make it perfect and I'm going to do several different drafts. And maybe when I'm out doing other things, I'm thinking about it. Maybe when I'm in bed at night and I'm still thinking about it. A lot of great artists say that much of their work is done between the work. Or maybe a painter. Thinking about the painting helps them do the painting. And so if you have this kind of schedule and you have this thing that's due, you may be thinking about it. That's a positive thing. That's a good thing. You may be looking up things as you work on your final draft. Looking up new kinds of sentence structures, looking up different words, phrases that you might use, example paragraphs. All of this is good. All of this is pushing you forward, especially if you start to enjoy the process, especially if you get excited about the process of making the perfect final draft. So then you have the final draft feedback date, just like the other one. This is do the feedback is due on this date, send it to the other person, review it, and maybe you decide again to have a discussion, get on a call, get on a video call and talk through it. Share feedback, share experiences, share insights, share the ideas you had throughout the process. This is a relatively intense process. But imagine if you did this, you do this process once a week for an entire year with a writing partner, a writing buddy, you really expect, how much do you think you're going to improve if you do this whole process 52 times with a really good writing buddy, you're going to improve a lot. You're going to see huge progress. 61. What makes a good prompt?: You've got your writing buddy. Now you know how to practice with your writing buddy. So it's time to choose a prompt and get started. And by the way, this is also for when you don't have a writing buddy and you just want to practice on your own. How do you choose a good prompt? How do you know if it's good or not? Well, that's what we're going to talk about and focus on in this lesson. Now, I'm calling these essay prompts because I'm assuming for your own writing practice that you will be writing essays. Variations, replacement other exercises like that which are shorter, very important. Those are small exercises. Generally, when you're going to practice writing, the essay is probably the best format. Does that mean that you can't write short paragraphs as compositions to practice? No, you can do that. Does that mean you can't write a full short story that's 20,000 words long or a whole novel. Now, you can do whatever you want. It's a good format because it's long enough so that you have to think about the structure. Maybe make an outline so that your ideas flow naturally from one to the next, from paragraph to paragraph. And because it contains paragraphs, so you have to think about the structure of each one. How to make sure your syntax is good within each paragraph and over the entire essay. But it's not too long that you don't want to think about each paragraph. That's 20,000 words. What is one paragraph? It doesn't really matter. I'm working on the whole thing. Something that's too long becomes a huge mountain that you feel like you need to climb. And it might be very easy to give up on that. Or as I mentioned, to not focus enough on the individual paragraphs, which is a really, really important part, especially if that's what you're trying to improve, your basic writing skill, your syntax, your clarity, the things we've been talking about in this course. So really, the best format is the essay, but it has to start with a good essay prompt. It has to start with a topic that can give you something to write about, something that you can be interested to write about. So what does a good essay prompt look like? I'm going to go over the basic characteristics of a good essay prompt so that you can make your own. We're going to go over the different types so that you have a very clear idea for how to make your own. Because if you can make your own, you don't need to go around searching for the perfect prompt. You can just think and make a good one. And it really matters because if it's not a good prompt, you're going to run out of things to say very quickly. And you'll have to add what's called fluff. We don't want that. Fluff is the enemy of good writing. This is where you say empty stuff just because you feel like you need to add more. How can I add more? But when someone reads it, when you read it, it's obvious there's no real content here. I have nothing more to say, but I keep adding extra stuff. I'm forcing it in. This is not good. This is not good. A good prompt should make you excited. Who have a lot to say about this? I really want to talk about this topic. I really want to write about this topic. This is interesting to me. So that's one of the characteristics and it's very, very important. Let's go through the others. A good essay prompt should be open. Now what does open mean? Well, think about a question that forces you to answer in a certain way, e.g. why is smoking bad? Now, at first you might think, okay, well that's maybe not a bad prompt. I can explain the reasons. But you've already forced me to have an opinion. I'm being pushed in that direction. It's not open. So I feel like I'm limited. Well, what if it's more complicated than that? What if I don't feel exactly that way about smoking? Now that's an extreme example because I think most people would agree that smoking is not healthy. But even if it's a common opinion, it's still almost always better to leave it open. Let whoever is writing about this topic decide what they think about it and then justify or explain themselves, rather than you saying, This is your opinion. Now, explain why it's your opinion. Because it's not quite my opinion. Well, I might agree with this one. What if someone says, why is coffee bad? Iced coffee? Coffee is not bad. Well, so some people think it's bad and some people don't. So instead of closing the question, just leave it more open. If you want it to make it as simple as explain how you feel about smoking. Give some personal examples to support your view on smoking. If you want it to make it just like that, that would be fine. It's open. It could be any view that you happen to have. It may mostly agree with this or maybe not. I'm not going to tell you. You're free. You can start where you want to start. You're not forced into a little hole and limited in what you can say. That generally leads to a better, more interesting essay. But it's also important to make sure that the prompt is rich. Now what does that mean, a rich prompt? Well, what if someone says, what? Someone, I mean the prompt maker. What is pizza? Now, I feel like I could give an explanation of pizza in a couple of sentences. And so I don't feel that this is rich enough because I would feel like I'm reaching for things, adding a bunch of fluff just to make it longer. More description, more description, more description. Okay. You already know what it is. But that doesn't mean that pizza is a bad topic. Because maybe you could say something like explain the worldwide popularity of pizza. Now, now it's not as simple. This is a richer idea because it requires research. You have to look up the historical background of this type of food. You maybe have to talk about how it's changed in different countries. There's a lot there. And each paragraph in the essay might be covering a sort of different area inside of this explanation about why is pizza so popular around the world? It certainly can't be said in a couple of sentences. A good prompt should also require you to think for awhile before you actually begin. It shouldn't be so simple that you can just immediately start writing. At least you have to think about how you want to actually form your ideas, what your real opinion is, how you might explain this. It doesn't have to be an opinion. Opinions are a great type of essay prompt, but certainly not the only type. The explanation type is also very good. That's a great type of prompt. But maybe that requires a little research or maybe some thought about how would I actually explain that? So it's very clear to someone if they were reading that to an audience who might read it. Let me think about that. In some way. It's forcing you to think, even if that's just your outline, how do I organize this? What's the best way to do it? Why did I do two dots above this? I many questions forcing me to think about why I would do such a thing. Very strange. Finally, it should be something interesting. It should be interesting and get the wheels moving. We often say get the wheels or the gears moving. These are the things in your head which aren't really in your head. But it makes you wonder, oh, yeah, I didn't think about that before. Or this is an interesting question or Ooh, yeah, I'd really like to focus on that. Or I have thought about that before and I've never really put it into words. This will be an interesting thing to research, or I have a strong opinion about this topic, whatever. It should be interesting. And that's a pretty general thing I know, but at least try to make it interesting because if it's totally boring and doesn't get the wheels turning or the gears turning, then it's easy to give up. And you might not really be doing it. You might not be fully engaged in it. You want to be fully engaged. And if you're interested in it, if it's actually interesting to write about, you're more likely to be fully engaged. If you have your writing buddy, then make sure it's something that you're both interested in. Make a list of ideas, general topics that you both like, and then make specific essay prompts about those topics. Can a general topic be a prompt like guns? That would be a little bit tough. I mean, you could do it that way, but it's really not as good as making a specific, clear, interesting, open, rich, thought-provoking prompt that gets the wheels moving that you're both excited to start on and you know, kind of how you want to begin. If you just say guns. I don't know where to start. What do I do with that? There's not much I can do with it. They use the value of a prompt is that it gives you some clarity and some focus. Oh, okay. It's about this thing about guns. Okay. Okay. It's an opinion, It's an explanation. It's something that's a little bit more narrow and a little more focused. Now, let's talk about the different types of prompts that we can use. 62. Essay Prompts for Opinion, Explanation, and Comparison: We're going to look at seven different kinds of prompts. And for each of these, I'm going to give you an example so that you can see what it looks like. Now, these are not the only examples of prompts I'm going to give you. I'm going to provide you as supplemental material to this course, a long list of prompts that you can use. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't develop the skill to write good prompts, to create good prompts. That's actually a very important skill. Being able to create a good question, to ask a good question, to make a good prompt can help you in many other ways, including in conversations. Being able to ask an interesting question and get others to speak, to make people think that you're interested in them. It's a very powerful skill. So I'm going to give you that as a supplement. But I encourage you to develop this skill on your own. Okay, now we're going to start with perhaps the three most common types of prompts, opinion, explanation, and then compare and contrast. This is the sort of traditional style. So an opinion prompt is to give your opinion to say what you think about something. These are great because there is no right or wrong answer. You don't have to research something. Asking someone, what is the square root of 43 is not an opinion. There's a right and wrong answer to that. It's not a good discussion prompt. It's not a good essay prompt at all, but an opinion. What do you think about this? Why do you think this? How do you think we could do this? What's your view about that? In your opinion? What do you think and then you're getting those wheels moving in the other person? Yeah. What do I think about that? Or if it's your own prompt in yourself? Yeah, what do I think about that? So that's the power of the opinion prompt. In your view, what's the best way to spend a ten day holiday? Yeah, what did we won't be the absolute best ten Day holiday. Very interesting question. Go to Thailand. I can go to a friend's, could stay home. And you think about it and you come up with a good answer. Very good one. Explanation prompts don't require you to do research and you can include your opinion inside of them as well. But you may need to depending on the prompt. If it's a question and you don't know much about it or prompt and you don't know much about it. Maybe you need to do a little research. That's great. You have to do a little reading. Maybe it's something like describe the rules of your favorite sport in detail. You know it because it's your favorite sports. So there, it's just a matter of how you organize things. So explanation prompts can be great to push you to organize well, to make sure the explanation is very clear, well-structured, you know, everything you want to say, but how are you going to say it? How are you going to make sure it's clear? Where are you going to place your examples? When are you going to mention this small detail that's not that important at the start or later on in this paragraph as a half of a sentence, right? So that's the thing you have to think about. So explanation prompts can be great as well. Provide an example of a tradition in your culture. Explain it in detail and discuss why it's important. Okay? This is interesting. You should know your culture. You may need to do a little side reading if you need a detail here or there, but it's up to you what to choose. And then you get to add colorful details to give people a feeling for that tradition. And maybe you add a personal story. Maybe you add an opinion. Maybe you think that this tradition is outdated, or maybe you think that this is the most important tradition in your culture and y. So you have the opportunity to do both. Very interesting. This one is maybe my favorite. Well, it's hard to say, I like both of them. Compare and contrast. Now here you're asked to analyze. For this one, you also really have to plan, well, how am I going to organize this? So that the things that are similar are kind of grouped together. Maybe the things that are different are grouped together, but there's still a whole picture of these two things separately. And how can I add personal details? This is a great way to explore structure and also a great way to explore syntax. And this is the type of essay that I would typically get in middle school or high school. It was always compare and contrast. Whenever there was an essay question on an exam, always compare and contrast. So native English speakers are almost bored with this type of prompt because we've done them so many times. And maybe, maybe you do too in your native language. But regardless, this is a great type of prompt to encourage very clear, succinct writing that cannot be misunderstood. 63. Essay Prompts for Pros and Cons, and Hypotheticals: Pros and cons prompts or another middle-school classic. These are really asking someone to say to opinions That's probably don't agree with each other to look at something from two sides. The good things, the pros, the positives, the advantages, and the bad things, the cons, the negatives, the disadvantages. Explore it. So this is a great opportunity to add lots of detail, to add opinion and combine the opinion with detail. And also to kind of push yourself to get out of your comfort zone. To not only say and write exactly what you think is true, but to explore other ways of seeing things. And so you have the opportunity to use vocabulary and phrases that you might not otherwise use. So that one is very, very interesting and very useful. Now, hypothetical, hypothetical is something we imagine. It's not true, it's not real, but we can imagine if it were, if it were true, if it were real. And that's a great opportunity to explore totally new areas with vocabulary that are maybe strange or unusual that you would never usually use. Because often opinions and explanations are based in reality in what's going on around you. But a hypothetical allows you to explore any space, to be a scientist or a president, or to live on the moon, or whatever, you can do, whatever you want with the hypothetical. And that really allows for a lot of creativity and exploration with new vocabulary and phrases. E.g. if you somehow knew you're going to live 120 years, how would you plan your life? Very interesting. Wow. Now I know this thing. I might start to use vocabulary related to education. I might use vocabulary related to crazy career ideas or technology in the distant future, that kind of thing. So this can be very interesting. So simply, what are the pros and cons of marriage? And that's really the best way to structure these. What are the pros and cons of? And then just say the topic. What are the pros and cons of marriage? What are the pros and cons of the death penalty? What are the pros and cons of whatever? So you have a lot of leeway here and you can explore a lot of topics as well. 64. Essay Prompts to Agree or Disagree, and Give Preferences: Now the last two types of prompts we're going to talk about are actually pretty similar. Agree or disagree prompts and preferences. Prompts. In both of these, you're asked to choose one. So you have to choose an opinion and then explain why you have that opinion. So it's kind of like an opinion prompt, but it might allow you to explore it in more personal detail. It is really just another format for opinion prompts. The cool thing about the format is that you can make statements like this one. Do you agree or disagree with the following? And it's often a colon. You could use a question mark, but because we have following, we use a colon. Spending money on a luxury car, even if you can easily afford it, is a complete waste of money. That's a statement. Now, do you think that statement is right or wrong? So you have to take that and then figure out, think about it. How do I feel about that? And then express your view, your justification, your support for that. That doesn't mean that you can't answer both. You may decide actually, I think sometimes that's right and sometimes that's wrong. Now let me give you examples and support to explain that. One important thing to note is that we usually assume when the person or whoever is reading your essay that they didn't read the question. So make sure you integrate the statement in some way into the beginning of the essay, usually in the first paragraph. So you might start something like, while some people feel that spending a lot of money on a luxury cars always a waste of money. I think or I believe or I would say and then you explain your opinion. So you've kind of worked the statement into the first paragraph or the statement of your opinion, and that's a good way to do it. That's the common, that's the common practice. But then after that, you're really just giving your regular opinion with your examples, with your support, with your explanations, and maybe personal experiences you've had for the preferences when it's the same thing. But these are more like hypothetical preferences often. So would you rather, and often these questions begin with, would you rather, would you rather do this or do that? Would you rather would you rather travel back in time to see an event in the past or travel into the future. Explain your choice and describe what you would expect to see. So you have a great opportunity, like the hypothetical one. You have a great opportunity here to use your imagination to be maybe a little bit more creative. This one may more often be focused on reality because it's a statement of belief. Often, not always, but often, what is right, what is wrong? We ground that in reality. These may be more free flying crazy ideas, interesting thoughts that you wouldn't normally be able to talk about. So I think all of these different types that we've talked about are just different ways to explore the language in writing. Now you can use these ideas in conversations as well. Think about prompts in that way, how to start a conversation, but that's not the subject of this course. This course is how to improve your writing. How to write more clearly, how to write effectively, how to write succinctly, how to write with impact and good syntax. Since that's what we're focused on, we need to have a pretty broad range of methods and ways to practice. So when you're working on essays, don't just do one of these. Oh, I like the preferences one. Or I'm just gonna do pros and cons. I'm talking about all of these because I want you to use all of them to explore different styles and push yourself. Remember, you should always be at the edge of your ability. You should always feel it could be a little better. That's slight feeling of frustration is a positive thing, especially if you're doing this with a writing buddy. So I would encourage you to get a writing buddy. I would encourage you to start practicing on your own, even if you don't have one and start using the tools that we've learned in this course. Put them into practice so that you can build the habits that you need to become a great writer. 65. Writing for Review: You've been practicing, you've been doing the exercises. You've started writing essays. You're really putting in the work and you're starting to see real progress. So how do you continue to challenge yourself? When you feel ready? What is the next level? Where do you go from just doing practice by yourself? Just writing for yourself. Just writing with your with your writing buddy. What do you do when you're ready to take it to the next level? There are some things you can begin. Do, some of them simpler, some of them a little bit more challenging. And when I say ready, I'm ready to challenge yourself. Not ready when you feel totally 100% ready and confident, that may never happen, right? Often, you need to do something that's a little scary in order to improve. So I don't mean that it should seem very easy and then you do it. I mean, when you're ready to take on a bigger challenge, but start simple. Start by writing reviews. If you buy a product, you buy something from an online store, you have a chance to leave a review. You went to a restaurant, you have a chance to leave a review, right? A well-thought out review of your experience. That would be a description of the place mixed with an opinion or an explanation of your opinion, maybe some specific things that happened that support your overall opinion of this place or this product, or this movie, or whatever it is. But the point here is that this is now not just for you or not just for you and your writing buddy. This is for the world, this is now out there. So the key idea when I say write for real, What I mean is you start to put your writing out there. It's a new level of pressure, yes, because hundreds, thousands of people could see what you write. But that's good. You want that kind of pressure. And when you get used to that, the things you were doing before will seem easy. No problem. Now I'm at a much higher level. I'm really challenging myself. Okay. So reviews, I can do that, I can handle that. What's next? Well, how about common threads or places to have discussions online, e.g. read it. There are a lot of online communities. There are many of them. Maybe you can join some of the smaller communities there and actually participate. Read what people are saying, write a reply given opinion, interact, maybe someone disagrees with you, you disagree with them. You have a small argument or discussion. Now, you're writing isn't just out there. Now your writing is having an impact. You may change people's minds and you have to interact with people in the language. You have to read what they wrote and respond and think about that. So it's a different level and it can be scary. But I promise once you start doing it, once you start doing something, the fear goes away. It's scary at first, but eventually it starts to feel comfortable. And you start thinking, okay, this is not so bad. This is actually fun. I like having these conversations. I get meaning from them. I feel like I'm part of a community. That's awesome. What's the next challenge? What can I do next? Well, if you want to really challenge yourself, maybe something like Cora. Now there are other things like this. This is just an example. Right now Cora is pretty popular. People ask questions that require a longer answer. Really, like an essay, a detailed explanation of something. And it could be about any topic. Maybe it's a historical event that happened in a particular country and people are asking about that and there are no good answers underneath. But you know the answer. This is a topic you've read about, you know, about it. Just e.g. so you do a little more research and you structure a really nice answer. You start getting followers. You answer more questions related to your expertise or what you know or what you're interested in, you gain more followers. Now people are interested in what you have to say. People are curious about your way of thinking. So now you're really having an impact. Now you're writing is not only out there, It's having a major influence on the way people see things, on how people understand these sorts of questions. Everybody knows something about something. Everyone is an expertise in one area. Maybe it's cosmetics, maybe it's technology, maybe it's dinosaurs, maybe it's cats. I don't know. But it's something. So explore communities like Quora and see where you can contribute, see where you can add value, and I think you'll find you enjoy it. I sometimes answer questions on Quora and I really enjoy the process of thinking about the best way to simply clearly answer a question. And you get a little pressure. A lot of people are going to read this. I need to make sure it's really good. I'm going to have my friend check it. I'm going to have a second draft. I'm going to have a final draft. I'm going to make sure it's great, very clear. And that's going to, that whole process is going to take you up to an even higher level. Okay, so that's great. Well, what if you just want to give your opinion about whatever and you don't want to just answer people's questions. What if you love travel and you travel a lot? What if you're interested in biology and you'd like to write about that. What if you love photography and you want to talk about cameras? Maybe you're interested in antique furniture, and you want to talk about that. What is your interest? If you have an interest, you can make a community around that interest yourself. You're at the center of the community. So start a blog. Start a blog. Why not? Why not start a blog? There are a lot of places where you can start a blog. And if people are interested in what you have to say, then they're going to follow you. And that's going to give you feedback about how well you're explaining things. And you're going to have the chance to get to know others who have the same interests because they're reading what you wrote when you get to interact with them, it really doesn't have any downsides. And I'm not saying you have to do it now. I'm not saying you have to do it ever. I'm giving you ways to continue pushing yourself. When you feel like you need a challenge. If you're there, you'll know when you're there. Whatever feels difficult, if that feels scary to you, maybe that's the right thing to do. If it feels overwhelming to you, maybe not, maybe not. It should be a little bit scary, but not so scary that it makes you cry. That's a good way to think about it. That's how I think about it, is it's so scary that it makes me want to cry. Alright, maybe it's too hard. Is it just a little scary? In which case, maybe I should try it. That might be very interesting. And what a great way to practice that feeling of pressure. Everybody knows. Luke posts a blog every Thursday at 06:00 P.M. it gives me some pressure. I'd better start working on Friday before over the weekend. Outline my ideas. Then on Monday I'll do my draft. And I'm just going to write maybe 30 min a day or an hour a day. Then on Tuesday I'll review my draft and on Wednesday I'll do a second draft and then I'll get some feedback from a friend and then I'll do my final draft on the morning of and then post it. Wow, so that's a whole process of thinking and improving. Now what if you wanna get really, really crazy? Because you've mastered the English language in written form. You feel really comfortable writing now, well, maybe apply to become a contributor somewhere. You don't have to be a full-time person. But a contributor is someone who occasionally sends in an article to some kind of publication. Maybe it's an online publication. Maybe they accepted. If you get accepted at a well-known online publication, if they take your work and use it, you know for sure that you have leveled up your skills. When I was in high school, I wanted to do this. I thought, you know, people tell me my writing is good, but I need proof. I need someone to show me that with a decision, right? So I sent some essays to a fairly big newspaper in my home state. I said I'm interested in taking some stories. I thought math, they probably will say no. I'm 17 years old. They didn't know I was 17 and they took my stuff and they gave me an assignment. They sent me out somewhere. I got to interview some people. I wrote several articles for that newspaper. They were published. So this was a very empowering thing in my life. It gave me a sense of, yes, Not only do I think that I write pretty well, but apparently I do because this fairly large newspaper is willing to send me out and write a story about something that ends up on the front page of the sports section for a 17-year-old, that's a pretty big deal. I was making phone calls with famous athletes and asking them questions and writing things down and keeping records. Making sure my story was really well paste all of that stuff that we've been talking about in this course. So I only tell you that because I felt I needed a challenge. And that challenge, which was pretty scary, allowed me to get comfortable with that level, which then made the previous things I was doing seemed pretty easy. It's about confidence too. It's about always pushing yourself. It's about giving yourself something that's a little scary right in front of you, jumping into it, just trying to see what happens. And when you do that, when you continue to challenge yourself, you will continually improve. Well, that is it for this lesson. This is the last actual lesson of the course. We've come a long way. I've certainly enjoyed it. I hope you have as well. In the next video, we're just going to go over a few things that I'd like you to keep in mind as you continue your English writing journey. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll see you in the next video. 66. Final Thoughts: Well, you've made it to the end of the course. Here we are. Congratulations, you should be proud of how far you've come. You've come all this way. And for me it's been, it's been really fun to take you through these tips, these strategies, and to share these tools with you, which can help you improve your writing. So I hope that you've enjoyed the experience as well. What I'd like to do is just review a couple of the main ideas that we focused on in this course. Not the specifics, just the main things so that you have a clear picture for where you're going to go next. How to use what you've learned in this course to continue your journey. This is not the end of the journey. This may be the beginning of your journey. I hope now you have the tools that you need to make sure that that journey is actually productive. To make sure that that journey is fun. To make sure that in the future, you continue getting better. You continue to make progress on your writing skill. Okay, So we'll just go through a few things and then I want to talk about what you can do next right after finish this course. There is never an end to learning. You can never say, Okay, now I know enough stuff. This is a constant journey, a continuous journey and a process of learning more things. Getting exposure to the English language, swimming around in the culture. The more you do that, and especially the more you enjoy, you begin to enjoy doing that, the more you'll find you'll have things that you can use, very useful things to apply to your writing. Whether that's idioms and phrases, references, grammar structures, different kinds of sentences, styles of writing as you continue to read more authors. So it's very important to continue reading and also to swim in the language and in the culture. And remember, reading does not mean that you have to constantly, always be looking at every single sentence and analyzing it. I want you to enjoy the process of reading. I want you to start to like what you're reading and wants to pick up a book again or want to read another article. That's a great thing. So follow your interests. Also when it comes to swimming. This, especially in order to get a feel for English-speaking culture. To join some online communities to watch movies in English, maybe without subtitles. This is a powerful way to get that background that native English speakers have, which is tough to get if you don't swim around? And how can you swim around in the language, in the culture if you don't enjoy the process, if you don't enjoy the communities that you're part of. If you don't follow your interests. If you don't enjoy watching videos or watching movies or TV shows, having friends and having conversations, joining book clubs. All of these things. If you don't enjoy this at all, it's going to be tough so you have to follow your interests and then it'll become part of your lifestyle. Naturally. This doesn't immediately seem like it's important to writing, but it is, it's all of that background information continue to learn. But you also have to put in the hard work to practice, to do the exercises regularly, the ones we talked about in this course, and practice writing in general, to continue to sharpen your skill is this process of putting down your ideas and looking at it and thinking, is this as good as it can be? Maybe I'll make another version, maybe I'll do another draft. Maybe I'll reword this in a different way. This process is very important, but it only has an effect if you do it regularly. That means practicing once a month is not going to help really. It's gotta be regular. You have to make it a habit. It's very important, like anything that you may practice, that you are consistent, that you don't give up, that you continue doing it regularly. And remember, part of that is this attention to detail. Remember we talked about that. Remember not to give yourself a break. Make sure the spelling is right. Make sure you've got the basics. Make sure your punctuation is correct. It's not that hard. Read everything you write again to make sure it's correct and you'll catch things that, oh, that's a small error that you maybe didn't notice the first time or when you were doing it. So be careful attention to detail and consistency. But also it's got to have a sense of play to it. You can't be afraid to change something. Or if you take a paragraph or a sentence from a book to do the variation exercise, remember, there's not only one way to say something. That's not the only way. Try it this way, try it that way. Try it ten different ways to have a sense of play. Alright, I said it this way. Let me try another, let me try another. Who wouldn't it be interesting if I tried this experimentation playing around like a kid? This is also a powerful way to develop your creativity and to use language to say what you mean exactly. It's actually hard to get your ideas from here down to put them outside. But if you have a sense of play, then you'll find more ways to do that. You'll realize, Oh, I can, I can do that. Very interesting. Play around, try different structures and you're going to develop your creativity. And that's going to have the added benefit of helping your syntax, which is also very important. We talked about that a lot. Maybe you try out stuff that you see here and you practice it, and then you improve your syntax. So play is a way to improve syntax. What about habits? Think about anything that you're good at. If you're good at something, when you need to use that skill right now, you don't have to go look up how to do it. You don't need to go check. You just do it. You have the skill. So if you haven't done this, you haven't done the practice and you just learned it from this course. And you know it, but you can't use it right away. Then when you have 5 min to write an email to a colleague, can you use the things that you learned in this course? Maybe not. You've got to have the habit. Because if you don't have the habit, those things, those skills will not be there when you need them. You want them to be there. Right now. Habits are the way to get there, and that is also why consistency is so important. You practice and you practice regularly. You use the skills often. And the more you do that, the more they become habits and then you don't need to think about them anymore. And they're just skills that you have, things that you do, you don't think about it, that's great. Now it's also very important to continue to push yourself. Remember the example of walking up a hill. If you don't feel always that slight feeling of frustration, you're always right up against your limit. You're always right up against the edge of your ability. You're always pushing yourself. If you don't have that feeling and everything's always fine and easy. Are you really improving? Probably not. You probably have reached a point and then kind of level now, everything's fine. So don't settle whenever you start to feel totally comfortable with where you are. Yeah, everything's fine. That should be an indication to you that you need to keep pushing a little farther. What's the next challenge? Maybe I should start a blog. Maybe I should get a different writing partner because this writing partner actually is not pushing me enough. Whatever it may be, always find a way to push yourself. So keep those things in mind as you go out there and continue your English writing journey. And don't be afraid to go back and revisit lessons if you need to. What was that lesson on syntax if rather commas one. So what was that? Go back, revisit it. Maybe in six months, take the course again. That can be a great way to really make sure you've got everything. You might catch things. If you've made progress from now until then, you might catch things then that you didn't notice the first time when you went through the course the first time. So it's always a good idea if you really want to make sure you get everything. Okay. That's it for me. Again, I really appreciate you going through this course. If you want to continue the journey, I have other courses. You can check out on my profile. Courses about pronunciation, about fluency, about grammar, about idioms, customer service, how to think in English, and a bunch more. So, feel free to check those out. I'd also really appreciate hearing how you felt about the course. So feel free to leave a review and if you have any questions, just let me know. I'd be more than happy to answer your questions. Well, that's it for me. Best of luck, as you continue your journey. Thanks again, and I will see you in the next one.