Whether or not my passion of becoming a high school English
teacher only came to me a year ago, I can say that I am eager to take this
course to improve my numerous amounts of grammatical errors and issues. However, I do know that improvement pairs
itself with hard work. As I have written several SHORT STORIES, ESSAYS, AND
ARTICLES, [series of nouns connected by commas] many of my fellow classmates
and teachers have noticed that I am diagnosed with the “comma confusion”
disease. In other words, I tend to use commas as if they were going out of
style.
For example, within my final research project in English
201, I produced a sentence that seemed a bit too long. “As one can expect to have, I have pieces of work that I am
proud of, pieces that I wish I could have spent much more time on to improve,
and work that I still do not understand the purpose behind.” Whether or not
this sentence flows to me, some of my former classmates begged to differ.
Throughout this course in English 326, I would not only like to be able to
correct my over usage of commas, but I am also interested in learning when
comma usage is most effective.
After I caught myself
using mass quantities of commas, I can honestly say that I do not know when to
properly place a colon or a semi-colon. In fact, I searched through essays
without finding a single use of either of them. While I believe that I am a
“writer in progress,” my THOUGHTS AND PLANS AND IDEAS [series of nouns
connected by “and”] all create fluff that tear down the quality of my writing.
If someone is curious why this has anything to do with the correct way of using
a colon or a semi-colon, it is merely because I have no idea how to explain it
or show how I have used it in the past. Although this is one way to improve my
career as an academic writer, I believe that a writer can never be perfect! One
of my previous teachers once said that writing can only be improved, yet no one
is ever perfect.
Considering I am
one of those “writers in progress,” I also do not know when the comma is
actually necessary. As it was listed above, I do use commas too much, but
sometimes, I forget to place commas in spots that are needed. For example,
someone may write, “To tell the truth I have never liked the Mariners.” I read
that in a paper without noticing that there needs to be a comma between “truth
and I.” Although I do have some confidence in saying that I believe I am a
quality writer, these mistakes need to be corrected if I want to pursue the
element of being a high school English teacher.
As one can notice after reading my paper, I have lots of
work and learning to do before the end of the semester is reached. However, the
over usage of commas, not understanding the concept of colons and semi-colons,
and not understanding where I need to place commas are all concepts and ideas
that I would like to correct as I continue my career as a imperfect academic
writer.
