OWL Boiler Plate Responses
Thesis
I viewed as your thesis your statement at the end of paragraph one: “College was once an
insignificant factor but now it plays an essential role in shaping my career path toward becoming
a quality future ESL teacher.” While this certainly captures a large part of the experiences that
influenced your desire to teach, it seems to me like there were other factors you talk about later
that also had a large influence upon your decision. You might want to introduce those other
influences at the beginning of your paper or as part of your thesis to help set up for the reader
what information is coming next. It might help to briefly mention early on that your guidance
counselor played a role in your college decision process, as did your English teacher and your
experiences at City View. Perhaps you could set up a "road-map thesis." By road-map thesis I
mean a thesis that not only captures the main idea of your paper—as you were beginning to do
with the thesis statement above—but also provides a hint at the organizational structure of the rest
of the paper. A thesis of this sort would capture/mention briefly each influence upon your
decision to become a teacher and indicate the order in which you will go on to talk more about
each of those influences later on in your paper.
Passive/Active
Try to use active voice rather than passive voice whenever possible. Sometimes it's unavoidable;
however, most times it's easy to change a sentence from passive to active just by rearranging a
phrase or two. I've attached a handout on active and passive voice that explains in more
detail. I've indicated some places where you can change to active voice in your paper. Most of
your passive sentences are not in dire need of revision; I can still easily understand the sentence
without wading through a lot of extra words or without having to figure out who is doing what
within the sentence; however, it might help "polish" your paper to make some of the passive
sentences I've marked more active.
Parallel Structure
Parallel structure: Whenever you include a list of actions or items in a sentence, they tend to read
more smoothly and your reader can more easily comprehend the list if the items in it are in
parallel format. This simply means that each item in the list is in the same format or the same
verb tense. For example, instead of "Exercise can include swimming in the pool, a jog in the
park, or to ride a bike on a trail," revising the sentence to read, "Exercise can include swimming
in the pool, jogging in the park, or biking on a trail" makes it read more smoothly. I've marked a
few places in your draft where you can make sentences more parallel. One way to practice
making sentences parallel is to take sentences that contain a list of actions or items and put them
in a bulleted list. If the first part of each is similar or identical, you have probably used parallel
format. If not, work on making them similar or identical. Here is an example:
Exercise can include
 swimming in the pool
 a jog in the park
 biking on a trail.
The second bulleted item does not match the other two, so you can change it to:
Exercise can include
 swimming in the pool
 jogging in the park
 biking on a trail.
First Person
Typically, research papers do not use first person (meaning "I," "me," "we," "our," "us). I'm not
sure whether your instructor has indicated that you can use it in this capstone or not. If your
instructor has OK'd it, disregard my comments here. If not, I would recommend getting rid of
first person and changing it to third person ("he," "she," "they," "them," etc.)
Second Person
It’s usually best to avoid using second person (meaning ‘you’ or ‘your’ or ‘you’re’ or addressing the reader
directly, as if writing a letter). Instead, try naming the person or group about whom you are talking. For
example, in this instance, you could say, “ . . . even though a person may be small . . .” or “ . . . even though
I may be small . . .”s
Sandwiching Quotes
As a general rule, I like to think of “sandwiching” quotes. That is, helping your reader
understand why you’ve included a particular quote and how it supports your main point. This
also prevents the voice of the person you are quoting from overtaking your own voice in the
paper. The sandwich looks like this: (1) a phrase or sentence in your own words providing
context for the quote—a “set-up,” (2) the quote, (3) a phrase or sentence in your own words
commenting upon the quote and/or directly illustrating how the quote upholds the point you are
making. Using this “sandwich” system for each of the quotes you include will contribute to the
solid foundation you are building to support your SOP.
I marked one or two places where you begin or end a paragraph with a quote. In general, it's best
to begin and end paragraphs with your own words. See my comments in your paper for further
explanation. You might want to look for other places where you haven't "sandwiched" quotes
within the paper (I explain what sandwiching means in my highlighted comments as well).
Editing/Reading out loud
A few of the things I noticed are small things you might have missed when you edited your
paper. Reading your paper out loud to yourself (or someone else) after you have written it can be
very effective for catching such errors as missing words, missing letters, one word instead of
another, etc. You'll be amazed at how many things you catch if you do this--it may also help you
catch some of the fragments and run-ons. For run-ons especially, notice where you seem to run
out of breath before you reach the period at the end of the sentence. I always read my work out
loud when I'm editing. I find it very helpful.
Pronoun Agreement
One thing to watch out for is being inconsistent with pronoun agreement. That is, if you refer to
"the teacher" try not to use "they" later in the sentence. Since "the teacher" is singular and "they"
is plural, it creates some confusion for the reader. The tricky thing about this is that we don't
have a genderless singular pronoun in English like many other languages do. The easiest way to
fix the problem is to make the entire sentence plural. For example, at the bottom of page four,
you say, "Through the development of a portfolio, the preservice teacher may demonstrate to
others the skills and knowledge they have gained in the complex arena of teaching." Instead, try:
"Through the development of a portfolio, preservice teachers may demonstrate to others the skills
and knowledge they have gained in the complex arena of teaching." In cases where that trick
doesn't work, you can keep "the teacher" and use "he or she" later in the sentence instead of
"they."
Pronoun Reference
Any time you say “this” or “their”—especially at the beginning of a sentence—make sure it’s
very clear what “this” is or who “their” refers to. It’s often better just to name the thing or
person.
Active/Passive
In terms of individual sentences, you might want to move more from passive sentences to active
sentences. Passive sentences tend to begin with “This is . . .” or “There are. . .” or “It is . . .” It
isn’t incorrect to write this way, but sometimes your writing sounds more lively in active style.
I’ve attached a handout that explains it in more detail in case you’re interested.
Commas--After Introductory Phrases
Use a comma to set off an introductory phrase. Introductory phrases are short phrases at the
beginning of sentences that provide "extra" information that isn't absolutely necessary to the
meaning of the sentence. Most commonly, they mark time or a shift from one idea to the next.
You caught several of them and correctly included a comma after them. However, I've marked a
few places where the comma should be added after the introductory phrase. Typical examples of
introductory phrases are "Today, . . ." "During the past year, . . . " "After the meeting, . . ." "In
times of crises, . . . " "When boarding the plane, passengers should . . . " See you paper for more
detailed examples.
Commas—joining independent clauses
Use commas to join two complete sentences with a joining word like "and" or
"but." Example: She likes to go to school, and she also likes to go to the movies. In this
sentence, the part before the "and" contains a subject and a verb, and the part after the "and"
contains a subject and a verb. Therefore, they are complete sentences joined by "and," and they
require a comma between them.
Semicolons
The primary use of semicolons is in place of periods. Any time you have two complete sentences
joined without a conjunction (connecting words like and, but, for, so, yet, nor), you can use a
semicolon. Just think of semicolons as a mark of punctuation you can use in place of a period.
There are a few other uses, but this is the most common. You might want to scan your paper for
correct semicolon use.
Semicolon - use a semicolon any time you are connecting two complete sentences (two phrases
that contain SUBJECT + VERB). Semicolons serve the same purpose as periods do, but you use
them when the two sentences you are combining are very closely related and you don't want as
much of a separation between them as a period would create. You also use semicolons when
connecting two complete sentences with a transition word such as “however” or “therefore.” In
this case, you’d include a semicolon before the transition word to indicate two separate sentences,
and a comma after the transition word to indicate where the second sentence begins.
Fragments/Run-ons
You have some fragments and run-ons within your paper. I've marked a few of them to give you
an idea of how to identify them. As a general rule of thumb, the easiest way to spot a fragment is
to look at the sentence and ask yourself, "WHO in this sentence is DOING WHAT?" (Or, some
cases, what object is doing what?) In most cases, if your sentence is missing the WHO (the
subject of the sentence) or the DOING WHAT (the verb or action of the sentence), it's a
fragment. A run-on is simply a series of complete sentences strung together without enough
punctuation to provide the reader a sense of how the ideas in those sentences relate to one
another. Think of simply including one idea per sentence. Each idea gets its own sentence.
Apostrophes
I also have one suggestion for keeping track of where to put the apostrophe in a given word.
Simply type the word as you want it (singular or plural) first (e.g. member vs. members). Don't
worry about the apostrophe at this point. Then, once you've typed the word the way you want it,
look to see if you are talking about one of that person or thing (member) or more than one
(members). If you are talking about one, the apostrophe goes before the "s" because you want the
reader to know you are talking about a member (singular = member's). If you are talking about
more than one person or thing (members), the apostrophe comes after the "s" because you want
the reader to know you are talking about members (plural = members'). The only exceptions are
words that become plural without an "s" at the end: women, men, children, etc. In this case, the
word is already plural when typed (women), so you add the apostrophe and "s" only to show
possession. Since you don't already have an "s" at the end of the word, the apostrophe comes
before the "s" you add to the word (the women's hats, the men's scarves, the children's books vs.
members' experiences).