3. Understand How to Use
Techniques of Coordination
Combine/connect ideas of equal
importance
Use coordinating conjunctions
(boyfans)
Use conjunctive adverbs
Use semicolon
Avoid illogical coordination
Avoid overuse of coordination
4. Examples of Coordination
The senator supports education. She
voted against the education bill.
The senator supports education, but
(or yet) she voted against the
education bill.
ILLOGICAL: The senator supports
education, so she voted against the
education bill.
5. Understand How to Use
Subordination
Join ideas to emphasize their relative
importance
State main idea in the independent clause
Use adjective clauses
Use adverb clauses
Use phrases, appositives, words
Avoid illogical subordination
Avoid overuse of subordination
6. Examples of Subordination
The Senator, who supports education,
voted against the education bill.
The senator, who voted against the
education bill, supports education.
The senator supports education although
she voted against the education bill.
Although the senator supports education,
she voted against the education bill.
7. Understand How to Use
Parallelism
Use grammatically equivalent forms (words,
phrases, clauses) to express related ideas
Use parallelism with comparisons (as, than)
Use parallelism with coordinating
conjunctions
Use parallelism with correlative
conjunctions
Use parallelism to increase coherence
Use parallelism to combine sentences for
conciseness
8. Examples of Parallel
Sentences
She sorted the books neatly and efficiently.
Employees who take the trouble to
understand their bosses, who engage in
self-analysis, and who remain flexible are
better prepared to cope with a difficult job
environment.
Scholarships are awarded not only for
academic and athletic ability but also for
unusual talents and even for accidents of
birth, like left-handedness.
9. Examples of Parallel
Sentences, Con’t
Having a solid marriage can be more
satisfying than acquiring wealth.
After emptying her bag, searching the
apartment, and calling the library,
Jennifer realized she had lost her
keys.
Ours is a government of the people,
by the people, and for the people.
10. Vary Sentence Lengths
Avoid too many compound (coordination)
sentences
Avoid too many simple sentences
Use modifiers to expand sentence length
participial phrases
prepositional phrases
adverb clause
adjective clause
adjectives, adverbs
11. Vary Sentence Types
Use exclamatory, interrogative or
imperative sentences
Invert standard word order
Use compound-complex sentences
Use periodic sentences
12. Other Techniques for
Creating Sentence Variety
Choose the subject of the sentence to
emphasize your meaning
Ex: Your success is our business.
Repeat key words or phrases for
emphasis
Vary sentence openings
Create emphatic organization in
sentences
13. Avoid Lackluster Structures
Use active instead of passive voice
Avoid nominals: nouns derived from
verbs
Avoid dull verbs (have, make, be)
Be concise
14. Examples
And though over the past week the
president has repeatedly called on
Congress to amend the law [NCLB],
his proposed reforms are largely
cosmetic and would leave the worst
aspects of NCLB intact.
15. Examples
Texas did exactly this, and advocates
claimed it had seen remarkable
results: test scores went up, the
achievement gap between students of
different races was closing, and
graduation rates rose.
16. Example
Any school not on track to meet this
utopian goal—one never reached by
any nation in the world—would face a
series of sanctions, culminating in the
firing of the staff and the closing of the
school.
17. Examples
They devote more time to preparing
students for the state tests in basic
skills, which will determine the life or
death of their schools.
So now come President Obama and
Education Secretary Arne Duncan
with their Race to the Top program.
18. Example
To qualify, states had to agree to
evaluate teachers by student test
scores, to award bonuses to teachers
based on student scores, to permit
more privately managed charter
schools, and to “turn around” low-
performing schools by such methods
as firing the staffs and closing the
schools
19. Examples
Republicans have traditionally been
wary of federal control of the schools.
Duncan, however, relishes the
opportunity to promote his policies
with the financial heft of the federal
government.
20. Example
Obama flew to Florida to celebrate the
test-score gains at a high school in
Miami with former governor Jeb Bush,
one of the nation’s most vocal
proponents of conservative
approaches to education reform.
21. Examples
Emboldened by the Obama
administration, as well as by hundreds
of millions of dollars from the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, many
districts and states now plan to use
test scores to evaluate teachers.
