Part -1:
Exercise One
Combine and revise the following twelve short sentences into several longer and more effective ones. Add or delete words as necessary
The bull-riding arena was fairly crowded. The crowd made no impression on me. I had made a decision. It was now time to prove myself I was scared. I walked to the entry window.
I laid my money on the counter. The clerk held up a Stetson hat filled with slips of paper. I reached in. I picked one. The slip held the number of the bull I was to ride. I headed toward the stock corral.
Exercise Two
Combine each of the following sets of sentences into one sentence that uses subordination to signal the relationships among ideas.
P. . The Hindenburg was gigantic.
It was an airship.
It was destroyed in an explosion.
P. . Athena was the goddess of wisdom.
Ancient Greeks relied on Athena to protect the city of Athens.
Athens was named in Athena's honor.
P. . Stephen King was arrested in 1970.
He had stolen traffic cones
His fine was one hundred dollars.
P. . Flappers seemed rebellious to their parents' generation.
They broke with 1920s social conventions
They cut their hair short and smoked in public.
P. . Skateboarding originated in Venice, California.
The time was the mid-seventies.
There was a drought.
The swimming pools were empty.
Exercise Three
Revise each of lie following sentences to highlight what you take to be the main or most important ideas.
1. The president pe Tsuaded the American people, his staff, and Congress.
2. We can expect a decade of record-breaking tropical storms and hurricanes, if meteorologists a] re correct in their predictions.
3. From the sightse ping boat, we saw a whale dive toward us and then, before crashing its tail on the waves. lift itself out of the water.
4. The presence of t he Indian in these movies always conjures up destructive stereotypes of scalping, horse theft, and drunkenness.
5. Victorian women were warned that if they smoked, they would become sterile, grow a mustache, die you ng, or contract tuberculosis.
Part -2:
Exercise One
Revise each of the following sentences to make its structure consistent in grammar & meaning:
1. To enjoy my job, my dream in life, which has kept me in school and working hard.
2. The reason air-pollution standards should not be relaxed is because many people would suffer.
3. By not prosecuting white-collar crime as vigorously as violent crime encourages white-collar criminals to think they can ignore the law.
4. Irony is when you expect one thing and get something else.
5. The best meal I've ever eaten was sitting by a river eating bread and cheese from a farmer's market.
Exercise Two
Revise each of the following sentences to eliminate any inappropriate elliptical constructions.
1. Convection ovens cook more quickly and with less power.
2. Argentina and Peru were colonized by Spain, and Brazil by Portugal.
3. She argued that children are even more important for men than women.
4. Were the traffic jams in Texas any worse than many other states?
5. The equipment in our new warehouse is guaranteed to last longer than our current facility.
Exercise Three
Read over three or four paragraphs from a draft or completed essay you have written recently. Check for mixed sentences and incomplete or missing structures.