Ник на форуме: RebeccaChapman210317226
If students get a comment from their teacher that their pronouns and antecedents don't agree and they don't understand what that means, how can they fix it?
Human beings usually learn how to speak long before they learn to write my term paper. Most of the time, they innately understand how to put sentences together so that they make sense. They usually don't have to give much thought to grammar or punctuation when they speak.
Everything changes when a person puts a pen to paper, however. In the English language, sometimes people speak in a colloquial way, but it doesn't translate very well to essay writing. One of the things that people do when speaking, for example, is unintentionally create disagreement between the pronouns and antecedents they are using.
So what's a student to do if he doesn't understand what pronoun-antecedent agreement is? I will tell! I never going to pay someone to write my paper. So, read on.
To determine what an antecedent is, the pronoun must be identified first. Remember, a pronoun is simply a "substitute" for a noun; it is used instead of the noun itself. So, for example, if a person writes, "Paris is a beautiful city, but it wouldn't be the same without the Eiffel Tower," the word "Paris" is a noun, and "it" is a pronoun. It's not difficult for a reader to understand that "it" is a substitute for "Paris."
Simply put, the original noun is what is referred to as the "antecedent." It is the original word for which the pronoun is substituting. So if an instructor tells a student that she needs pronoun-antecedent agreement, it has to do with the pronoun not agreeing with the original noun.
Sometimes it's difficult for a student to exchange his "spoken hat" with his "writing hat," because pronoun-antecedent disagreement occurs fairly often in colloquial speech. However, once the student knows the problems to look for, he can correct them in his essays.
My colleagues from Write My Paper NYC think, one of the most common forms of disagreement occurs with indefinite pronouns (words like everybody or someone). Many times students will refer to a singular noun (the antecedent) as a plural pronoun, which is incorrect.
For example, this sentence does not have pronoun-antecedent agreement: "When someone asks you what time it is, they usually have an idea already." The word "someone" is singular, but the pronoun "they" is plural, so the two do not agree. There are at least two possible ways to correct this problem:
Part of the reason why students make this common mistake is that they tend to want to keep sexism out of their essays; by referring only to "one" as "he," they feel they are being sexist (with good reason). To avoid that dilemma, students can refer to an indefinite singular pronoun as "he or she," but the problem there is that constant repetition of "he or she" throughout an essay can be distracting. It is perfectly acceptable today to instead alternate, referring to "one" as "she" in one paragraph or context and "he" in the next. Another way to avoid this problem is to keep all pronouns plural, thereby ensuring that pronouns will not refer to a singular (engendered) person. However, it is not acceptable to refer to a singular noun with a plural pronoun.
Obviously, a student has multiple concerns when writing an essay, from preparing an attention-grabbing introduction to conducting proper research and writing strong paragraphs, but students must learn from their mistakes if they want to get excellent grades on their essays. One way to improve one's writing is to pay attention to pronoun-antecedent agreement. If nouns and pronouns agree, instructors will be able to pay more attention to the student's words, rather than being distracted by her errors.
Written by Rebecca Chapman, supported by Write My Paper service. March 2021.
