Many of us are taught that good writing is just good grammar. Arguably this is mostly not true because there are many smart decisions that writers make that are not about the writers' correct use of grammar (such as their understanding of their audience, decisions about compliance or violations of genre expectations, using the best available means of persuasion). The purpose of the next two responses is to teach you that learning accepted grammatical rules is not just about being right or wrong; instead it is about whether you can make an effective impact on your audience. By understanding grammatical rules, you have more tools for creating an effective impact. For this response you will focus on understanding dependent and independent clauses. If you develop an understanding and appropriate use of these rules, I would argue you can make your sentence about 80% grammatically correct.
First, read Bania-Dobyns' WHAT IS RHETORICAL GRAMMAR? 3 WAYS IT CAN IMPROVE YOUR WRITING paying attention to how she defines rhetorical grammar and her examples for the effect grammar can affect one's audience. Then read the Purdue OWL's discussion on Independent and Dependent Clauses, Run-ons, and Fragments. Finally watch both The Basics of Rhetorical Grammar: Recognizing Independent Clauses and Joining Independent Clauses by UC Denver Writing Center also paying attention to their definition of rhetorical grammar and how they use the rules of independent clauses to explain it.
Second, reading over your first response that you submitted to the instructor, find 1) one sentence in which you correctly joined two clauses–either two independent clauses or a dependent clause and an independent clause and 2) one sentence in which the connection between two clauses–either two independent clauses or a dependent clause and an independent clause–was done incorrectly.
Third, for the correct sentence that you have chosen, write it down and use the readings to explain why this sentence was written correctly. Then think about Bania-Dobyn's reading about rhetorical grammar and rewrite this sentence to have more impact on your audience. Explain why you think the revised sentence will have more of an impact.
Fourth, for the incorrect sentence, write it down and explain, using the readings, why it is incorrect. Then revise the sentence to be grammatically correct and explain why the revision is correct.
Insert the correct and incorrect sentence sentences into your paragraphs discussing those paragraphs using the correct citations rules.
Fifth, write a 300-500-word response that details your analysis of these two sentences.
On January 18, 2018, submit your work on the "Classwork" page for Response #2 in the Google Classroom