A Simple Way Homeschoolers Can Improve Their Writing By Varying Sentence Structure
Posted on: 17 March 2015
Writing is one of the most important disciplines for homeschool students to develop during their high school years. While homeschoolers should have learned the fundamentals of writing in their elementary and middle school years, high school is the time when they build on these basic skills and learn to write advanced essays. Here's one way homeschoolers can improve their essays by adding variety, regardless of the writing curriculum they're using.
The Types of Sentence Structures
Sentence structure is the grammatical arrangement of sentences within a piece. A sentence's structure can range from the simple, "Jim threw the ball," to the compound and complex, as the University of Central Missouri's guide explains. In addition to simple sentences, which has only one clause, there are:
- compound sentences, which have more than one main clause
- complex sentences, which has at least one subordinate clause
- compound and complex sentences, which have multiple main clauses and at least one subordinate clause
A compound sentence may be joined by a conjunction, such as for, and, nor, but, or, yet or so, or it might have a semicolon. The relationship between a main and subordinate clause in a complex sentence is shown by a subordinating conjunction, like after, although, because, as or before (there are many others).
The Importance of Varying Sentence Structures
Without different structures, a piece becomes flat and mundane. An essay that only uses simple sentences reads like a young child's book, but one that over-uses a semicolon to join simple clauses into compound sentences will be equally one-dimensional.
Skilled writers learn how to use different types of sentence structures to create variety and vitality in their writing. A piece that uses simple, compound and complex structures will have sentences of different lengths and rhythms, which will help retain a reader's attention.
The Process of Learning to Vary Sentence Structure
Your homeschool writing curriculum might not have a lesson devoted specifically to varying sentence structure (although it likely lists the different types of structures in a glossary). You can use almost any lesson in your curriculum, however, to work on varying your sentence structure. You'll just need a handful of highlighters.
Begin by assigning each different type of sentence a color. For instance, simple sentences might be yellow, compound sentences might be pink, complex sentences might be orange, and compound and complex sentence might be green.
With a color assigned to each sentence structure, go through a piece that you composed for a recent lesson. Highlight each sentence the appropriate color. If you need help identifying a sentence's structure, consult your curriculum's glossary or a grammar book. You might find a few sentences that don't fit any of the structures. These are sentence fragments and grammatically incorrect; they should be rewritten.
Once you have gone through every sentence in your piece, you will have a color-coded picture of how varied your sentence structure is. Is your essay all one color, or are there lots of different colors?
Hopefully, you have a varied mixture of colors. If you don't, then try rewriting some of your sentences to create more diversity among their structures. Are there two sentences you can combine? Perhaps you could break up a compound sentence into two simple ones? Make a few changes and then see how it changes the picture of your work.
The Need for Practice
Going through this process once may help you understand the importance of sentence structure in your writing. If you're going to improve your writing before college by introducing a greater variety of sentence structure, though, you will need to go through a homeschool writing curriculum regularly. Make it a point to do this with one lesson from your writing curriculum each month throughout your high school years. By the time you need to write college essays, you should have a colorful palette of sentence structures to use.
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