In my set of papers I dealt with the Antigone based assignments titled Leader Creon, Antigone, and Haemon. The authors all show a decent use of varying sentence length and structures. However, all three papers struggle with the use of commas, and use almost no other way to separate related independent clauses. This leads to quite a few run-on sentences and comma splices. Each paper does use commas at some point, but not always or correctly. This shows experimentation in the area, and a possible vague understanding of the principles of certain comma uses. I believe teaching these students about comma and conjunction combinations, and semi-colons would be very beneficial. [For example], in the Leader Creon paper the author wrote"This shall be a special wedding and I will like to honor them." This example is the only time a word was used in the improper tense; the lack of a comma before a coordinating conjunction is common throughout all of the papers. All three papers also lack comma use after many of the introductory words that require one at the start of a sentence. In the Hamemon paper the author writes"Hopefully the people of Thebes will understand....." As we know the "hopefully" should have been followed by a comma, and this mistake is present in each paper at least once. In the Antigone paper the author wrote"But then when it was all said and done they wanted to take the credit for what I did even though they didn't do anything." This sentence just does not flow very well. It is a continuation of the previous idea, and has numerous grammatical errors. Understanding the semicolon would help correct this sentence, and go along the same line of thought that teaching the comma and conjunction would.
My only question on these papers is what have these students already been taught, and/or do the other papers have these same mistakes in them. I have already listed what I would teach these students, and I have selected these particular mistakes because all three papers made them. The basis for the lessons would be independent/dependent clauses and the ways to separate them. The simplest of these are the comma and conjunction, and the semicolon. Both are also closely related, and that is why I would incorporate them specifically. I would also give a lesson on introductory phrases followed by a comma for similar reasons.
[An introductory phrase followed by a comma]
