Friday, October 7, 2016

Week 6, Derrek Ballard

Was it just me or was the test this week excruciatingly hard?  I did well on the spelling and grammar portions, but I definitely need to study dangling modifiers and verbs a little more.

The "Right Word" assignment was also very difficult.  I scored well, but it made me realize just how little I know.  Ha!  There were a lot of questions where I knew the right answer just by exposure, but I wouldn't be able to explain why the right answer was correct.  One of those words were affect vs. effect.  I can look at a sentence and determine which one should fit, but I could never give reasoning.  This picture helps me remember the difference.  The word "affect" seems to deal mostly with emotions or reactions, whereas "effect" seems to deal with an action happening.  Another thing that helps me remember the difference is by comparing the sentence in question with a phrase I've heard before.  For example, I know "special effects" (for movies) has little to do with emotion and more about a verb.



This is the picture I found on my Facebook feed this week.  It fits in the curriculum well because one of the mistakes is the wrong then/than word.  On top of that, there is an unnecessary comma and capitalization on the word "Then."  I could also argue that it's not a parallel sentence and that it's an incomplete sentence.  If this were my tattoo, it would read "It's better to live for today then to die for tomorrow."

2 comments:

  1. Great way to remember affect vs. effect. Also, I hope your tattoo would use the word than, not then.

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  2. I am the same way on knowing which one to use but not being able to explain to someone else exactly why. I absolutely love the "special effects" in movies idea. That is a great way of helping to remember the difference.

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