Hi Adnan,
I apologize for the delay in posting your feedback, I hope it’s okay 🙂
I really enjoyed reading your writing process. I also identified with your perspective that writing journals is a much easier and smoother process than academic writing because of the level of formality. Having read your writing in blogs and the papers you shared with us through the semester, I would like to emphasize that your strongest suit is the clarity you bring into your writing. Every time I read one of your works, I get amazed that it just flows and is so easy to read no matter what the subject, it really is great.
1. Having read the chapter on Shape, I would say that you usually write wonderful short sentences that convey the point fast, as is recommended. However, if all your sentences are always short, they can get lengthy and wordy when reading them as a paragraph. Take these ones:
In academic writing I’m always careful with the language I use. Formality and high register words are required in this situation.
I think that your sentences have a direct, clear subject, which is good. To make the sentences concise and have an active verb, I would suggest merging the two sentences (above) and bringing the verb “use” to the front to make the sentence active. For example: “I use language carefully in academic writing because formality and high register are required.”
Another example:
Writing journals on the other hand, I have no problems. Instead, I enjoy writing them because they tend to be rather informal.
You can change these sentences so that it avoids interruption “on the other hand” and is more active and concise:
On the other hand, I have no problems writing journals and enjoy them because they tend to be rather informal.
2. I would say that you don’t take long getting to the subject. Usually, you cover it in the beginning of the first sentence and this is not a problem for you. Because of the short sentences, there is usually one introductory clause.
3. Let’s take this sentence from your blog: “In other words, the feedback that I received from my peers was insightful and helped me figure out some gaps that I would never see them by my own.”
In this sentence, the subject was “feedback that I received from my peers was insightful” and the verb was “helped.” According to our reading, it says that we should keep our subject short and get to the verb quickly. As evident by your sentence, you did a great job. Looking over the rest of the blog, it is the same so good job!
4. While reading you blog, I did not find too many sentences that displayed interruptions. One that did include an interruption was in your last paragraph: “If we did, it would be messy and impact our scores, for example, if we were writing something for a class.”
This sentence is sprawling and sounds disjointed when read aloud. There are a lot of commas. To clean this up, I would suggest moving the subject clause to the front and change the sentence to, “If we were writing for a class, our sentences will be messy and impact our scores.” If you like, you can even include “for example” to the front of the sentence.
Other than this instance, I didn’t see many interruptions in sentences.
Overall, you don’t really have a problem with shaping sentences and you did a great job.
Let me know if you want me to clarify anything and see you next week!
Sabahat