Zhang 1

Johnny Zhang

Professor Marie Webb

Ling 12

4 Jun 2019

Reflection

I have done four tutorial assignments this quarter, which are The Big Three Comma

Rules, Vocabulary Assigned Readings, Word Forms, and Punctuation. Among these topics, I

believe that the comma rules and vocabulary assigned readings are most important.

As for comma rules, within each sentence, I focus on whether “and” is joining two

complete sentences and needs a comma. I also focus on the comma with other coordinating

conjunctions (for, nor, but, or, yet, so). Notably, sometimes I mistakenly separate a subject from

its verb with a comma. This happens most often when the subject is so long and complicated that

it feels like it’s time for a comma. I believe that the best method is reading long your sentences

aloud.

Apart from using comma rules appropriately, word choice is also important. By

becoming familiar with general academic vocabulary and aware of discipline- or topic-specific

vocabulary, we can prevent from overuse daily words. The best way we can become familiar or

aware of these words is to reading more contents. We can highlight some unfamiliar words

while reading the article. Then we can record the vocabulary for further use and review on

notecards or notebook, which contains the source of the word, its meaning, other formation of

the word, and other words and phrases it may co-occur with. Besides, using word properly

requires a large amount of vocabulary, which can also be accumulated by daily reading and

recording.
 Zhang 2

Despite the fact that comma is used commonly among different punctuations, I suggest

that we can also try to use dashes, italics, and other punctuations. For example, dashes can be

used to emphasize the content or provide an explanation or summary of the earlier part of the

sentence. You may notice that this function is quite similar with the comma. A dash is more eye-

catching than a comma, which calls the reader’s attention to the change in tone at the end of the

sentence. Therefore, utilizing different punctuation will increase my essay’s diversion and keep

my audience focus on where I want to emphasize.

Taken together, I believe that the tutorial assignments are really helpful since students

can acquire main information related to writing through doing these assignments. I only want to

point out one disadvantage of the language power: there is no correct answers so we can only try

our best to figure out answers with uncertainty. My future plan with language power book is to

continue reading the rest of the tutorials that have not covered. Most importantly, I will

accumulate new words and set up a vocabulary log based on information from the chapter about

vocabulary assigned readings.