New discovery to a long-existed asset

It was the first time that I came to writing center and I have to say it is indeed a recommendable place to go for revising papers. Before I came to Writing Center and had an appointment with Ms. Swift on Wednesday, I basically had three focuses on the improvement of my written coursework: the topic sentences, the conclusive or connection sentences in the end of my paragraphs and the propriety of words and except topic sentences, which she thought was okay for this paper, I gained many advises on what shall I change and correct..

What Ms.Swift asked me to do at the first time was reading the paper to her instead of she examining my paper alone. Reading out loud is different than simply looking through the paper. I felt like it was a really effective way of letting me realize whether the sentences I wrote or the words I used were clear and appropriate enough. Sometimes, the place I made a stop in the reading was exactly where I had my mistakes. Ms. Swift gave me suggestions when I finish each paragraph. I was surprised at the fact I only made a few grammar mistakes; however, there were quite a few places where my language was not clear or concise. For instance, I wrote “..... we manage to do so”, a sentence in which readers cannot get what “we manage to do”, so I changed it into “....we manage to indicate his innocence”.  Another example for that is I wrote “ they successfully marry each other and unite together”, and Ms. Swift thought “marry each other” and “unite together” had a repeating meaning and therefore I should delete one of them. Besides, Ms.Swift let me find more quotes from the original play in my paper to support my analysis or even substitute some lines which have similar meaning as those in the original play. Like she changed the sentence “an action that is disgrace to Abraham” to a direct quote “which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it”.

During the meeting, I had a discussion of my long sentences with Ms.Swift not only on this coursework particularly but on my essay in general. As you might know, I tend to write long sentences in my formal essays, but Ms.Swift gave me quite a few suggestions on editing or breaking up these sentences. She indicates that some of my long sentences, although not wrong in grammar, would be viewed as not fluent while readers read through. Instead of writing long sentences all over the paper, she said, I can write a essay with an even combination of succinct and long sentences with an even share of both. She then showed me an essay related to a hurricane happened in the USA before  in a magazine. The essay had a combination of short and long sentences and more importantly, I realized the difference between his long sentences and mine: although his sentences were long, their meanings could still be understood straightforwardly.