First, let me say that you have produced a piece of writing that represents the effort of a serious student, you have worked hard to incorporate some of the grammar and writing techniques we’ve been learning in class.

Strengths:

This story has a clear narrative structure (plot line) and you have started to incorporate description in order to expand your reader’s enjoyment and understanding. You write using a variety of techniques, including devices showing the passing of time and dialogue.

You’ve also successfully incorporated some of the grammar techniques that we have studied.

Advice:

Your descriptions would have been improved with the use of a wider variety of noun phrases and adverbials – I’m curious about why you decided not to start any sentences with prepositions – maybe you disagree with the idea that these would help with descriptive writing?

Another area for work is your sentence structuring. You tend to run your sentences together, or connect them using commas rather than full-stops. At this stage my advice is for you to be conservative, and when in doubt, make it a complete sentence. I’m happy to work with you to help you to identify these if my notes don’t help.

Advanced Advice

I also want to ask: why did you avoid using many subordinate clauses or relative clauses in your piece? Since you successfully created these in class activities – what do you think it was that stopped you going back to your piece and developing some of the sentences that you’d written?

Your original piece with detailed annotation is here:

[gview file=”https://jameel.student.edutronic.net/files/2012/12/Jameel.pdf”]