English Language Arts and Reading.8.10.D.ii

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The student is expected to

edit drafts using standard English conventions, including:

 

consistent, appropriate use of verb tenses and active and passive voice;

writing process TEKS talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Composition: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts--writing process. The student uses the writing process recursively to compose multiple texts that are legible and uses appropriate conventions.

Provide students with a teacher-created text that includes inconsistent verb tenses and excessive use of passive voice. Task students with identifying the errors found in each sentence and rewriting the sentences correctly.
 

Further Explanation

This SE requires students to understand how to construct sentences with consistent verb tenses and active or passive voice as appropriate. Students should know that verb tenses indicate when an action or state of being occurs. Students should also know that there are three main/primary tenses in the English language: are past (indicating something has already happened) present (indicating something is currently happening), and future (indicating that something will happen later). Students should also understand that passive voice is more difficult for the reader and requires more words to express action but is sometimes appropriate for the context.

Students are expected to understand the difference between verbs in active voice and passive voice. They should also know how to use active and passive voices consistently and in what circumstances passive voice might be appropriate as a matter of style. Passive voice causes the subject of the sentence to be inactive and gives the focus of the sentence to the recipient of the action. The sentence “The ball was thrown across the field by the boy” is written in passive voice; the doer of the action (the boy) is not the subject of the sentence.
Verb tenses indicate when an action or state of being occurred. The three primary tenses in the English language are past (indicating something has already happened), present (indicating something is currently happening), and future (indicating that something will happen later.) When multiple verbs appear in a clause, the tenses should be consistent.
During the editing stage of the writing process, students further improve their drafts and often prepare them for publishing by correcting conventions errors. Applying standard rules of the English language correctly helps the audience to easily understand the information by not having to interrupt their thinking to decide what the writer intended to say.
Students should understand the difference between verbs in active voice and passive voice. They should also know how to use active and passive voices consistently and in what circumstances passive voice might be appropriate as a matter of style. Active voice allows the subject of the sentence to perform the action. This presentation is easily followed by readers. For example, “The boy threw the ball across the field” is a sentence in active voice; the boy (the subject) is carrying out the action of throwing (the verb).
standard rules of the English language, including written mechanics such as punctuation, capitalization, spelling, paragraphing, etc. and written/oral grammar such as parts of speech, word order, subject-verb agreement, and sentence structure

Research

Composition Writing Studio. Common writing assignments. University of Purdue’s Online Writing Lab. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/685/05/ 

Summary: This online resource offers a complete overview of the writing processes, genres, mechanics, and components involved in each. The overview includes definition of terms, examples, graphs and charts as appropriate, and additional resources.