Have you ever heard people say, "The verb is the engine of the sentence?" Well, this statement has much truth to it. Today, we find that many students overuse adjectives and passive verbs in their writing. To solve this annoying problem, Aimee Buckner, author of best-selling book, Notebook Know-How, introduces a strategy called "Identifying Passive Voice." During this strategy, students are given a passage with passive, non-engaging verbs. Their job is to replace these verbs with more active, engaging verbs. Let us take the following two sentences as examples. "The ball fell out of David’s hand and dropped on the ground." "The ball fell out of David’s hand and plunged to the ground." One would say that the second sentence has a more appealing active verb than the first. The word "plunged" creates a vivid image in the readers mind. It enables them to in vision the ball actually dropping at a fast speed and hitting the ground at full force. Meanwhile, the word "dropped" only creates a mild image for the reader. When you think of a ball dropping, you do not exactly know how fast it is going or how hard it hits the ground. Therefore, the reader’s image is unclear. Using active verbs in writing is very important. Without them, students will continue to write "grocery store list" type essays that are uninteresting and non-engaging. Therefore, as teachers it is our duty to help our students write paper that are, ALMIGHTY.
