A Quiz About Combining Sentences

A Quiz About Combining Sentences A Quiz About Combining Sentences A Quiz About Combining Sentences By Mark Nichol One of the most useful techniques for tightening flabby prose is to concentrate more information into fewer words. This can be done with parenthesis and subordination. The result is that two or more sentences are combined into a single statement. Let’s try that again: One of the most useful techniques for tightening flabby prose is to concentrate more information, through parenthesis and subordination, into fewer words, with the result that two or more sentences are combined into a single statement. The outcome is a more complex construction and one that is not necessarily much more concise but one that is still digestible and creates a richer reading experience by collecting flat, simplified, isolated components of thought into an integrated whole. Not every multisentence passage merits combination, of course (and I admit that I favor longer sentences than some might find suitable), but vigilant effort to reduce verbiage has merit. Try this sentence surgery yourself with the following examples, and compare your results with my solutions: 1. â€Å"The Democratic presidential candidates had all been doing lousy imitations of Dean’s Bush-bashing road show. They noticed that his spiel was playing so well with the lefties in the North.† The second sentence folds easily into a parenthetical phrase placed within the first sentence; just omit the pronoun and change the verb form: â€Å"The Democratic presidential candidates, noticing that Dean’s spiel was playing so well with the lefties in the North, had all been doing lousy imitations of his Bush-bashing road show.† 2. â€Å"Christian leaders were used to spending a lot of time worrying about the faith of the unchurched. They were stunned to learn that the kids who showed up every week in the pews the churched didn’t know much more than those who didn’t.† The solution here is nearly identical to that in the first example, differing only in form; omit the first of the two repetitions of the verb were and delete the second sentence’s subject, but leave the form of stunned intact: â€Å"Christian leaders used to spending a lot of time worrying about the faith of the unchurched were stunned to learn that the kids who showed up every week in the pews the churched didn’t know much more than those who didn’t. 3. â€Å"The document addressed many issues that had been circulating in the government and industry sectors for the past several years. These issues were economic, military, and social in nature.† Here, the word count can be even further reduced by incorporating the second sentence in to the first one after deleting the verbose â€Å"issues . . . in nature† construction; relocate the subject so that it follows the series of adjectives: â€Å"The document addressed many economic, military, and social issues that had been circulating in the government and industry sectors for the past several years.† 4. â€Å"The group meets once a week. During each meeting, students participate in a mini-lesson that explains specific conventions or spelling patterns.† The first sentence has only one essential word in it: week. Slip its adjectival form into the second sentence before meeting and discard the rest, though you could, for more clarity, insert â€Å"in the group† after students: â€Å"During each weekly meeting, students [in the group] participate in a mini-lesson that explains specific conventions or spelling patterns.† 5. â€Å"The series has featured writings by a variety of French thinkers. It culminated in the publication of a two-part meditation by Jean d’Ormesson. This man was a well-known literary figure and member of the academy.† As I demonstrated in my introduction to this post, three sentences, not just two, can be reconstructed into one; in this case, convert all but the subject of the first sentence into a parenthetical for the second one, replace that sentence’s subject with the preceding one’s, and attach the third sentence to the second sentence as a subordinate clause: â€Å"The series, which has featured writings by a variety of French thinkers, culminated in the publication of a two-part meditation by Jean d’Ormesson, a well-known literary figure and member of the academy.† Voil! Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Bare or Bear With Me?One Fell SwoopEmpathic or Empathetic?

Bilingualism - Definition and Examples

Bilingualism s Bilingualism is the ability of an individual or the members of a community to use two languages effectively. Adjective: bilingual. Monolingualism refers to the ability to use a single language. The ability to use multiple languages is known as multilingualism. More than half of the  worlds population is bilingual or  multilingual: 56% of Europeans are bilingual, while 38% of the population in Great Britain, 35% in Canada, and 17% in the United States are bilingual (Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia, 2013). Etymology From the Latin, two tongue Examples and Observations Bilingualism as the NormBilingualismmore generally, multilingualismis a major fact of life in the world today. To begin with, the worlds estimated 5,000 languages are spoken in the worlds 200 sovereign states (or 25 languages per state), so that communication among the citizens of many of the worlds countries clearly requires extensive bi- (if not multi-)lingualism. In fact, David Crystal (1997) estimates that two-thirds of the worlds children grow up in a bilingual environment. Considering only bilingualism involving English, the statistics that Crystal has gathered indicate that, of the approximately 570 million people world-wide who speak English, over 41 percent or 235 million are bilingual in English and some other language. . . . One must conclude that, far from being exceptional, as many lay people believe, bilingualism/multilingualismwhich, of course, goes hand in hand with multiculturalism in many casesis currently the rule throughout the world and will become increasingly s o in the future.(Tej K. Bhatia and William C. Ritchie, Introduction. The Handbook of Bilingualism. Blackwell, 2006) Global MultilingualismThe political history of the 19th and 20th centuries and the ideology of one stateone nationone language have given rise to the idea that monolingualism has always been the default or normal case in Europe and more or less a precondition for political loyalty. Facing this situation, it has been overlooked that the vast majority of the worlds populationin whatever form or conditionsis multilingual. This is quite obvious when we look at the linguistic maps of Africa, Asia or Southern America at any given time.(Kurt Braunmà ¼ller and Gisella Ferraresi, Introduction. Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History. John Benjamins, 2003)Individual and Societal BilingualismBilingualism exists as a possession of an individual. It is also possible to talk about bilingualism as a characteristic of a group or community of people [societal bilingualism]. Bilinguals and multilinguals are most often located in groups, communities or in a particular region (e.g. Cata lans in Spain). . . . [C]o-existing languages may be in a process of rapid change, living in harmony or one rapidly advancing at the cost of the other, or sometimes in conflict. Where many language minorities exist, there is often language shift . . ..(Colin Baker and Sylvia Prys Jones, Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Multilingual Matters, 1998) Foreign Language Instruction in the U.S.For decades, U.S. policymakers, business leaders, educators, and research organizations have decried our students’ lack of foreign language skills and called for better language instruction. Yet, despite these calls for action, we have fallen further behind the rest of the world in preparing our students to communicate effectively in languages other than English.I believe the main reason for this disparity is that foreign languages are treated by our public education system as less important than math, science and English. In contrast, E.U. governments expect their citizens to become fluent in at least two languages plus their native tongue. . . .[F]oreign language instruction in the U.S. is frequently considered a luxury, a subject taught to college-bound students, more frequently in affluent than poor school districts, and readily cut when math or reading test scores drop or budget cuts loom.(Ingrid Pufahl, How Europe Does It. The New York Times, February. 7, 2010)