Making Connections: Grammar and Everyday Experiences

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The Colon (:)

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The Colon (:) We live in a society, which include people from many walks of life, and these diverse differences can both be great and controversial.  People's differences can include the use of a variety linguistic rules and applications.  This variation in the use of language preferences, including the ways people use colons and other punctuation marks, depends on people's everyday needs, interests, cultural backgrounds, and educational experiences. According to Weinstein and Find, people use colons for many different reasons: marking an end of a formal salutation, introducing a block quote, and presenting a dialogue (7-8).  The authors' use of colons in Chapter 1 indicated that Weinstein and Finn were assured of their use of colons for their own writing purposes.  With five colons that were used in three pages, the authors demonstrated mastery of using prescriptive grammar to indicate how grammar should be used in the English language.  Their use of colons is...
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Week 5 (Feb5-11) - Prepositions

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Grammar Moves - PREPOSITIONS      People usually wants to know where they are in certain places and time.  Prepositional words like "in," "at," "on," "during," "since," "inside," "outside," and "next" are valuable English words that help people to know when and where they can be in respect to time and place.  Even though prepositions are "usually small words," (Weinstein and Finn 18), they are important for many reasons. Prepositions help users to make connections to how "things relate to each other" (Weinstein and Finn 18), identify the purpose of "instrumentality" (Weinstein and Finn 18), and "connect the dots" (Weinstein and Finn 18).  Thus, prepositions do magical work. Without prepositional words like "to," "before," and "after," users may end up using a broken language. Descriptive grammar will become useful for them in this case b...
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Grammar for the Sophisticated - The Use of Semicolon

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  Speakers and writers can use semicolons (:) to join two independent clauses together instead of a comma (,) (Weinstein and Finn 64). For example, 1) John's friend new a about a trip to Virginia. She told him how excited she was. The above statements are two independent clauses, which can be combined with a semicolon (;). John's friend new about a trip to Virginia; she told him how excited she was. According to Weinstein and Finn, the above independent clauses have connections because the second clause relates to the first clause (64). Thus, the purpose of a semicolon is to unit two related ideas together.   In my role as a uniter for a workshop, I had a chance to unite ideas from workshop's attendees.  From one attendee: "I can use technology to help students access information. The presence of technology in my classroom is important for my students.  My students know how to use smartphones, computers, and tablets. So it is critical that I know how to use technolog...
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