Sunday, February 21, 2016

Local Revision: Passive and Active Voice

I always considered myself a strong writer. And then my senior year of high school happened. That is the year I realized how prone I am to use the dreaded passive voice. It is something I have struggled with since.

"Typewriter". 6/21/15 via pixabay. CC0 Public Domain.

So, I divided the verbs from my draft once again. This time to show how I use the passive and active voice in my writing.

Here is the table:


Are the actions in your piece mostly general, vague or non-specific? Are the actions mostly vivid and specific? Are there instances of passive voice? Summarize what you learned by analyzing your verb usage in this way.
  •  The action verbs I use are mostly non-specific and vague, and unfortunately passive. I have some specific action verbs, but not enough to make my QRG interesting and exciting. I think a lot of my verbs are passive because I am describing a lot, and not explaining enough. Once I add more analysis of the stakeholders and the ways they make their arguments, my QRG will have more active verbs.
  • I learned that I still struggle with staying away from the passive voice. In order to improve my piece, I definitely have to change sentence structure and rewrite entire sections so they fit the purpose of the project and allow for usage of more active verbs. 

Based on this analysis, how could your use of verbs be improved overall in the project? Be specific and precise in explaining this.
  •  I can improve my draft's overall verb usage by analyzing more and describing less. I also need to rethink the purpose of the project. I think I am more focused on summarizing and explaining the situation instead of analyzing why and how the stakeholders feel and make their arguments. Once I start explaining the stakeholder's views, the actions should by nature of the content be more active. 

How do you suggest I fix this problem?

No comments:

Post a Comment