Revising a Garden Club Paragraph
Priya is revising a paragraph for her English class about the school's new garden. Her draft reads, in part: 'The garden club meets every Tuesday, students who arrive late must sign in at the shed. Each of the raised beds, which were built by the woodshop class last spring, need fresh soil. Ms. Okafor told Priya that the compost bin was empty, but she said it would be refilled by Friday. The club has three goals: grow vegetables for the cafeteria, study pollinators, and to reduce food waste.' Priya's teacher marked two errors and one unclear sentence, and asked her to combine two sentences without changing the meaning.
1. Locate the comma splice in the draft and write a revision. Then explain why inserting the word 'and' after 'Tuesday' is a weaker choice than the revision you wrote.
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The splice is The garden club meets every Tuesday, students who arrive late must sign in at the shed. Two independent clauses are joined by only a comma. A clean revision: The garden club meets every Tuesday. Students who arrive late must sign in at the shed. A semicolon would also work.
Inserting and is weaker because it presents the sign-in rule as a second, equal fact rather than as something that follows from the meeting. The relationship is consequential, so a period, a semicolon, or a subordinator (Because the club meets every Tuesday, students who arrive late...) makes the logic visible. And mostly postpones the run-on feeling.
2. The teacher marked 'Each of the raised beds ... need fresh soil' and 'grow vegetables ..., study pollinators, and to reduce food waste' as errors. Name each error, correct it, and explain the rule in your own words rather than reciting a definition.
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Two different errors are marked. Agreement: the subject is Each, which is singular, so the verb must be needs; the phrase of the raised beds and the clause which were built... sit between subject and verb but do not change it. Parallelism: the list mixes bare infinitives (grow, study) with a to-infinitive (to reduce). All three items should match: grow vegetables for the cafeteria, study pollinators, and reduce food waste. The logic is that items in a series are read as occupying the same slot, so a shift in form makes the third goal look like a different kind of thing from the first two.
3. The sentence 'Ms. Okafor told Priya that the compost bin was empty, but she said it would be refilled by Friday' is unclear. Revise it and explain why the reader cannot resolve 'she' from the surrounding sentences.
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She has two possible antecedents, Ms. Okafor and Priya, and both are grammatically available. The pronoun convention that points to the subject (Ms. Okafor) is a default, not a guarantee, so a reader who reasons 'Priya is the one who needs the compost' can just as easily choose her. The following sentences give no clue about who controls the refill. Revision: Ms. Okafor told Priya that the compost bin was empty, but the bin would be refilled by Friday. Or ...but Ms. Okafor said it would be refilled by Friday. Naming the actor removes the guess.