A Grammatical Analysis in Three Secrets to Academic Success
What will readers do after reading a writing style?
There are many things that readers may do after reading a writing style, such as making judgments, and thinking about how information might be used in the future. Analysis is also an important thing that a good reader done. People can analysis about the author’s ideas, techniques, and patterns in the writing style. Language is involved with almost everything we do as human beings. We cannot live without language. To capture a language, Learning about English grammar pattern is a dimension that would be mean for achievement. Analysis a writing style can help us discovering the language to express what we read.
Three Secrets to Academic Success was written by Elana Peled, Ed.D. She is the founder of Academic Success for All. She started writing to help people who struggle to achieve academic success. This book reveals the powerful secrets that underlie academic success. The second secret is the learning creativity. It is about that every single person on the planet has the capacity to be creative. Our creativity is involved in how we make sense of the world and is intimately connected with our ability to learn. Based on my analysis in her writing style, she had written this chapter in grammatical correct English. One of the most important factors is that sentences were not formed by words alone but by structural units. The author had conformed her words, phrases, and sentences to specific pattern determined by the syntactic rules of the language. She utilized different types of sentences, passive voice, relative clause, and pronoun to emphasize some facts, attract our attention, and make effective writing.
The author used a variety of sentence types at varying lengths to express more strong statements, reasonable ideas, interesting and dynamic energy. There are some types of sentences that were used in her writing, such as simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. They brought about different effects in her writing. An example of simple sentence is “Creativity is our birthright!” (Peled, 2011). This simple sentence contains just an independent clause to declare or exclaim something. In this simple sentence, she wanted to exclaim about creativity. It has the most basic elements that make it a sentence, for instance a subject, a verb, and a completed thought. In addition, the exclamation mark is used to give emphasis to her statement. This means she wants the reader to understand the strong statement even in simple sentence. The following example is using a compound sentence to compose of two or more independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction. “They are simply abandoned again, but without any warning that would give them the opportunity to prepare a means of finding their way home.” (Peled, 2011). This sentence contains two clauses which are joined by "but". It contains two independent clauses that have equal grammatical status. The comma and coordinating conjunction do not affect the independency of the compound sentence. Therefore, coordinating conjunctions are useful for connecting these clauses. The purpose of using coordinating conjunction is to make an impact between two clauses. A complex sentence contains both independent and dependent clauses. In the following example, both clauses contain a subject and a verb, but the dependent clause has a subordinating conjunction words “since”. “Since academic success requires creativity, we can now understand how one might subconsciously choose to avoid being successful there” (Peled, 2011). Subordinating conjunction signal meaning relationship between two clauses and express specific independent clause. It also affect the grammatical status of the clause that subordinating conjunction attach to. Because of the dependent clause comes first, it is always followed by a comma. In this case, the complex sentence indicates clearer and more specific relationships between two clauses of the sentence. In fact, the author also relied on the purpose and relationship of the sentences to determine the type of a sentence. Using a vary sentence types is a good idea for more interesting and appealing to readers. She did not use too many simple sentences in a paragraph because they seem choppy and disconnected. However, some compound and complex sentences can over‐complicate a paragraph, muddying the writer’s ideas and alienating the readers. Readers would be more attractive in the writing. Using a variety of sentences made her writing interesting and lively. Readers would be more attractive in the writing. Voice pertains to the way a verb functions relative to the subject of the sentence. Many sentences in this chapter were written in an active voice. With active voice, the action of the verb is linear and straightforward. The sentence is subject (agent) –> verb string –> direct object (theme) –> (rest of predicate). The author used active voice to make her writing more persuasive, clear, and concise. Moreover, she used some sentences in passive voice to draw more attention, and important information. With passive voice, the verb acts upon the subject, the subject is the recipient of the action. The movement of the sentence is subject (theme) –> verb string (passive element) –> (rest of predicate) –> (by Object of Preposition) (agent). These following sentences were written in passive voice to emphasis the information in the sentence. “Our creativity is involved in how we make sense of the world and is intimately connected with our ability to learn” (Peled, 2011). The passive elements of the verb are form of be and past participle of main verb “(is involved” and “is connected”). The author had a strong reason to use the passive voice to aim the theme and verbs and express the rest of ideas. In these cases, passive voice best reflects the focus and get intention of the readers. There is another example of passive voice. “But many children’s creations are judged or condemned, perhaps most damagingly by well-meaning parents, teachers, or caregivers” (Peled, 2011). This sentence has passive verb string elements (are judged), and the agent follows after “by” (by well-meaning parents, teachers, or caregivers). In the example above, the focus is on the fact that children’s creations are judged. The writer wanted to emphasizes the receiver of the action (many children’s creations). Therefore, passive voice may be more effective than active voice in this sentence. Understanding the difference between active and passive voice, the readers will be able to enhance the writer’s goals. Passive voice focuses on the action or the recipient of the action. Using passive voice can be a useful device for showing the reader where the attention should be. Indeed, using passive voice modifies the tone of the sentence. It helps us shift our perspective from subject to object.

Language is made of sounds, words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, and even books. Each of these levels can be analyzed. Usually, the rules will also indicate in some way an analysis or structure for the sentence. A grammar is a set of rules which describes which sequences of words are valid sentences of a language. The sentence pattern is a formula showing the units which make up a sentence. The sentence pattern is a useful guide to the learner. Every sentence is a sequence of words. To be a grammatically sentence analysis, they must conform in word classes, sentence types, the constituents of the grammatical units, and the voices. By syntactic rules, sentences are described how things are organized or ordered. The order of words is very important.

Bibliography

Peled, E. (2011). Learning is creative. Three secrets to academic success (pp. 13-16). Retrieved from http://www.academicsuccessforall.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/11/Academic-success-for-all.pdf The two major families of word classes are content class and structure class. The author put her words into these two classes. Each word class has specific physical shapes that are unique to that class. Looking at the physical shape of the word, each sentence has a verb that has tense form. For example, “The second secret to academic success also has two parts” (Peled, 2011). This verb “has” has a present tense form and it matches with the singular noun “secret”. Another example of present tense form is “In our society people often link creativity with the arts” (Peled, 2011). The verb “link” has a present tense form and it matches with the plural noun “people”. Also, she used nouns that can have a plural form, such as parts, students, teachers, toys, and objects. Each word class has specific purposes in a sentence and appears in certain positions in sentence. For example, “The child may learn to suppress the innate desire to create” (Peled, 2011). The verb “learn” follow an auxiliary “may” in strict order and the purposes is to introduce the possibility of an action “learn”. An example of the structure class is using determiners to describe the following nouns, such as the important, a sandbox, that child, and their parents. She also used some conjunctions to create longer, more complicated sentences. An example of using conjunction in a complex sentence is “When these judgments or condemnations are repeated or severe, the child may learn to suppress the innate desire to create” (Peled, 2011). Conjunctions serve to connect two or more clauses together to make longer constructions. The word classes describe the relations and purposes between words and sentences in the content. By using word class in this chapter, the readers are easy to get the important reference point. As a second language learner, word classes helped me to predict the meaning and function of words in this chapter. Each sentence in this chapter consists of many words and phrases which sound as units. The constituents of those grammatical units are noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and prepositional phrases. Phrase Structure Rules controls the units in a consistent sentence. Therefore, the rules require in strict orders to capture the constituent of English language patterns. As an example of a noun phrase, “the importance of creativity” consists of a determiner (the), a noun (importance), and a prepositional phrase (of creativity). It follows by Phrase Structure Rules, rule 7, NP→ (Det) (AdjP)* N (PP) (TC). “Link creativity with the arts” is one example of a verb phrase, which follows by Rule 13, VP → AuxP V (NP) (PP) (AdvP), with AuxP (present tense), V (link), NP (creativity), PP (with the arts). An example of an adjective phrase is “very uninhibited”. “Very” is a degree adverb, “uninhibited” is an adjective. This adjective phrase matches with Rule 10, AdjP → (DegAdv) Adj (PP) (TC). In addition, “to the child” is a prepositional phrase with a preposition (to), a noun phrase (the child). It follows by Rule 12, PP → Prep NP. Most of the phrases in this chapter follow by the phrase structure rules, which can be used to construct visual representations of a sentence. The sequence is a phrase functioning as a constituent in the structure of the sentence. By using Phrase Structure Rules, the reader is easy to understand the units and the goals of every word in the sentence.