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Alicia knows that the market is competitive. She's written and rewritten her resume and
cover letter. Doing her very best to present herself succinctly and effectively. She even
had her mom look it over. Her older brother, who got a job at the same company two years
ago, said it looks good but it needs to stand out above the rest. How can Alicia be certain
her writing has the power it needs?
Chang has been struggling in his college math course. Numbers are hard enough for him, but
now his instructor has asked him to write a reflective paper detailing what he has learned
about math in the real world throughout this semester. He has no trouble coming up with
ideas, but he's not sure how to put it into words without sounding like a broken record
player or robot, how his teachers have described his writing in the past.
Pam's been blogging ever since her son Jared was born five years ago. Through Facebook,
Twitter, and other social media platforms, Pam's blog has acquired quite a few followers.
She wants to make sure that her writing not only makes sense but appeals to her readers
as well. She's hoping to get an endorsement from a parenting magazine, but she knows that
will only happen if her writing sounds good to her followers.
What do each of these scenarios have in common? Sentence fluency! By pinpointing problem areas
and arranging sentences and phrases into a meaningful rhythm, you can engage your readers
and clarify your position.
Through this video you will be able to: define and identify sentence fluency, use a markup
strategy to identify problem areas related to sentence fluency, explain the importance
of sentence fluency, and locate resources to help you revise for sentence fluency.
So, what exactly is sentence fluency? Great question! What do you think? Let's hear what
other students and instructors have to say about these writing skills.
Well, it's kind of a personal thing, but for me, sentence fluency is the flow of a sentence.
It's the way that the words and the clauses are combined to convey a clear meaning to
a reader.
Sentence fluency is where the sentence isn't very choppy. It's nice and smooth.
Sentence fluency calls into mind the audible nature of the language. It has to do with
the cadence of the language, the sounds of the language.
Sentence fluency is really about crafting your phrases and sentences in a way that is
purposeful and also engaging. It requires careful attention to how you begin your sentences
and how you vary your sentence lengths. For example, in this paragraph, you should notice
that most sentences are about the same length. Highlighting every other sentence can help
you determine that visually. Additionally, every sentence begins with a noun, a person,
place, thing, or idea, or a pronoun, as demonstrated by these notations. These have equal grammatical
weight; that is, they appear very similar in the text and stagnate the flow of the writing.
But after some revision, the writing is much more fluid, with a greater variety of sentence
beginnings and lengths.
Now that you have heard a few ideas about sentence fluency, try this question again.
The key to sentence fluency is altering your sentence structure so that you have a variety of sentence
beginnings, such as nouns, prepositional phrases, and participles, as well as a multitude of
sentence lengths, including short, medium, and some long sentences, in your writing.
Although you may be able to define what sentence fluency is, that doesn't necessarily make
it meaningful to you, and in order for real change to happen in your writing, you will
need to embrace the value of this skill. So, why do you think sentence fluency is important?
It's important because it makes your paper sound better and whoever is reading your paper
can get your ideas better.
If your sentences don't flow well, then your reader is going to spend all their time trying
to make sense of what you are saying instead of actually being able to think about the
meaning of what you are trying to convey.
Since it's all about communication, in the academic world, people are judged based on
how well you can communicate.
Sentence fluency's power is evident in this writing sample. Before revision, it's not
entirely clear what is most important in the paragraph. Readers have no way of accurately
discerning the most striking facts. After revision for sentence fluency, the short sentence
makes the most important or critical idea stand out.
Another example of purposeful sentence fluency revision is apparent when multiple sentences
contain similar or identical information, which can reduce the natural flow of writing.
Combining two or more sentences can help you reduce unnecessary repetition and, in turn,
make your idea much more clear and to the point.
So, what can sentence fluency do for you? Ok, this was a trick question. The answer
is all of the above and more. Sentence fluency is an often over-looked writing skill that
can impact your ideas, organization, word choice, and voice and greatly influences the
impression you leave on your reader. It can help you avoid a robotic voice by making your
writing rhythmic, produce a more natural writer's voice, engage your audience with more variety,
set you apart from other, more mundane authors, avoid unnecessary repetition when you combine
sentences, and emphasize specific ideas through the use of short sentences.
Now that you have established what sentence fluency is and why it's important, it's critical
that you are able to identify resources to help you on your journey of discovery and
revision. Can you think of any places you can go, books you could use, or websites that
could help when you need to revise your work for sentence fluency?
The Math and Writing Center is an excellent resource for students who need to practice
sentence fluency. Here we can explain the rules and why certain parts of speech are
used the way they are.
There are also a lot of really good online resources that are open for anyone to use.
The OWL at Purdue is one that comes to mind, but there is a lot of good stuff out there,
you just want to make sure that it's published by a credible organization.
I also think that personal reading helps you with fluency and spelling and knowing how
to combine different words and whatnot.
It's important that you find resources that are available to you, where you are at. Your
university may have a writing center, for example, that can help you focus on sentence
fluency. There are also ample websites that can assist you. For instance, Purdue's Online
Writing Lab, commonly known as OWL, has a lot of great online tools related to writing.
Books, such as those assigned in composition courses, can also be a great reference. A
simple online search for sentence fluency can help generate an abundant amount of useful
tools. The key is finding and using the resources that work best for you.
Take some time to jot down a few resources with which you are familiar or that you would
like to explore, and make a plan to get started right away on your journey toward meaningful
sentence fluency.