My Christmas Day

Alaysha Green
Mr. Raymond Villegas
ENG 1010
Jan. 31, 2011 FYI: When you are writing papers, make sure everything is evenly spaced. There should only be a double space between the information and the title

My Christmas Day Of 2010 As I woke up with the sun’s rays in my eyes, I hit my phone alarm clock, which since it was ringing at 10 a.m. As I walked (the way you wrote this makes it a fragmented sentence. If you add a subject and change the verb it is not fragmented) down the beige hallway, into the ocean theme bathroom. I turned on the bathroom light, and turned then the water on to wash my face. When you have the same action in the same sentence to different objects you can eliminate the second verb so it doesn’t sound so repetitive After washing my face with warm and soapy water, I took my blue face towel to dry my face off. Good, great description Finished with my face, I realized that it was Christmas morning. This is a great revelation here. I was thinking it was a typical day so I’m glad you held off saying it was Christmas till later in your paragraph. It gives that feel that we (audience) are walking up with you and when we come to our senses we realize it’s Christmas. Good job. I walked down the hallway further to my son, Tydarrius’, Cars theme room filled with a car theme. Standing next to his bed, and waking him up, he jumped out of bed, and said “Yay! It’s Christmas”. He ran to the Christmas tree to turn on the bright and shining lights. He was amazed and dazzled with all the presents in the front of him. His eyes glistened and sparkled as he took the paper off the presents. Good paragraph. There were a few ways of writing some of the sentences you wrote but otherwise it was good
Scuffing off to the freshly white painted living room to watch him, open his gifts, I told him. “I hope you like your gifts, baby”. When I read your draft in lab, it needed some work. Now I like the revisions that you have made to your draft. I can see a vast improvement When he got through with gift wrappings, we threw all of the wrappings in our black gallon size trash can. Sometime later, my mom and dad came over to the house. Tydarrius opened the big red front door with double locks on it for from (is from what you are trying to say here?) them. Tydarrius and I hugged them and said “Merry Christmas”. As they walked in the door, they pulled out two gifts with snowman wrapping. Tydarrius ran to the gifts with great excitement and with speed. Tydarrius ripped open the presents. The first present he opened was a yellow and black motorcycle with driver. His second gift was a v-tech reader book called “What That Noise”. As he played with his toys, I wandered off from the family room directly into the my apple themed kitchen. I turned on the kitchen lights and started to cook on the white gas stove, cooking breakfast for my son and me. The aroma filled the air with the smell of scrambled eggs, crispy turkey bacon, and buttery grits with cheese. Good I laid his food on the Thomas and Friends plate ware which sits in dining room. I called him to the red oak square dining room table. He ate his food with the speed of lightening. Great paragraph The time was 12:00 p.m., when we decided to go to my Aunt Shirley’s house for a visit. The sun still shined bright as we walked outside into the cold and crisp air to get into the light blue Nissan pathfinder. As we drove, I saw a lot of people smiling, laughing, and playing with their families. Kids were playing with their Christmas toys too. As the car stopped, we arrived in front of my aunt’s house. My father parked the truck in front of white picket fence of my aunt’s house. My aunt’s house is a brick house with wild flowers growing in and out the front and back yard. It’s surrounded by a bright, white, picket fence with an open and closed gate door to enter in. We arrived at her house at 12:45 p.m. As we walked in her house, she said, “Merry Christmas to you.” She offered us to sit down on the black leather sofa, in her Jungle themed living room.This is a great paragraph. Notice I didn’t have to make any corrections. In this paragraph. Everything flowed nicely.
The house was filled with the aroma of delicious and tasteful foods like The food she cooked included fried chicken, honey baked ham, fried turkey, barbecue ribs, and fried pork chops. Her sides included were organized in a row and began with rice, collard greens, baked Mac-cheese, squash, green beans, macaroni salad, and pasta salad. Her desserts included There mouth watering deserts such as banana crème pies, pumpkin pies, sweet potato pies, and chocolate cakes. After a long visit at my aunt’s house, it was finally time at eat. We said the Lord’s prayer and ate. When the feast was over, we sat around and sang Christmas songs on the red oak piano in the dinner hall. We sung sang Christmas songs such as Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Silent Night, and Santa Claus is Coming To Town. I don’t think these words have to be underlined because they are not a book. I think they have to be italicized or used with quotation marks. You can check in your resource book Everyone sang all the songs okay, but little Brian from next door sang off key on purpose to get attention from everybody who was singing. This sentence sort of came out of the blue and you didn’t mention before who Brian was or continued talking about him. In this situation you have to ask yourself “What is the importance for having this sentence about Brian in my story.” When the singing was over, we walked back into the living room to pursue more entertaining activities. You should begin a new paragraph here since you are no longer singing. Dancing is in the same genre as singing but it is an action entirely different and you switched to another room.
Back in the family room we started a dancing contest which included everyone in the house. We started dancing to old and new hip hop party music. As soon as the music started, my shy and quiet cousin, Jada, was embarrassed about dancing in front of people. I pulled her up off of the black leather sofa. At first she was standing there like a kid who forgot their line in a school play. Good analogy She took a deep breath and danced like a video diva on a BET music video. After dancing, we sat in the den and listened to a Christmas story called, “It Was the Night Before Christmas”. Everybody sat around my Aunt Shirley, like she was Santa Claus telling the story himself. As she told the story, everyone was as quiet as a mouse. When the story ended, everyone cheered as loud as people that were in a football stadium. Great analogies in this paragraph The time was now 3:00 p.m when we decided to play a board game like Sorry and Pictionary. My cousins, Jada and J.D, and I played one game of Sorry together. The game started off with me in 1st place, Jada in 2nd, and J.D in 3rd place. I had 3 pegs on the board. I was red, Jada was blue and had 2 pegs on the board, J.D. was yellow and had 3 pegs on the board. As the game came to an end, I had all my pegs expect one. It was still on the board. My cousin, Jada, had 2 more pegs to get home. My cousin, J.D, had one more to get home. I passed J.D on the game board and won the game. Good. As you write this story it seems to get easier for you to tell it and describe what’s going on. In the beginning of the story your writing seemed forced but now it’s starting to relax.
The next game we played was called Pictionary. We split up into two teams. One team included my Aunt Shirley, Cousin Jada, my mother Theresa, Robin, Patricia, and me. We called our team, The Divas. The next team, Ballers, included my father Danny, Alvin, Terrance, Josh, and family friend James. After a long struggle, team Diva won the game with 10 points. Ballers lost with 7 points. Both teams played an excellent game. There is a nice flow to this paragraph. I didn’t take part in Scramble, because I was tired and needed a break. So I sat in a kitchen chair to watch and listen to the Scramble match that was going on. I watched the Scramble match between my cousins, Jada, Terrance, Larry, and family friend James. Larry won the game. Jada came in 2nd place. James in 3rd place. Terrance lost completely, with no points on the board. He was cooler than a cucumber about the loss. Another great analogy After the game playing was over, I walked from the kitchen to the living room. I sat down on the black sofa in the living room with Cousin Jada as she talked about her new boyfriend. She seemed to be very happy and her face was as bright as northern lights in the night sky. As she talked about him to me, Jada described him as tall, dark-skinned, smart, and handsome man with powerful shoulders and muscles. I was very happy for her, but felt a little envy too. This was your strongest paragraph in the essay. Good job.
After my long conversation with her, I walked slowly outside next to white picket fence, where my cousin J.D was standing. J.D. began talking about his plans after high school graduation. I stood there with him, because I wanted to listen to his ideas. He turned and asked me, “What choices do I have”? I replied to him, “You can get a job, go into military, or continue your education at Virginia College like me”. Then I told him,” I am very proud of you for coming so far”. J.D thanked me for believing in him. I said, “Remember to keep up the good work”. I walked back into the living room to look at the clock. The time was now 6 p.m. You should begin a new paragraph here My family and I told everybody goodbye. We strolled outside thru the gate and jumped into the blue Nissan Pathfinder truck. My parents took Tydarrius and me back home. They told us goodbye. They jumped back into the truck and left down the black concrete street. As we walked up the seven wooden stairs and into the house, I locked the front door behind us. Then we enjoyed the rest of the evening with each other. I liked your conclusion. I think you could have re-capped the day with your family a bit more. I was having so much fun hearing about the games, singing, dancing, and eating that I forgot your day began with just you and your little boy. A conclusion should include a little of everything you mentioned in your paper.

Alaysha
Wow! You have come a long way from the 1st draft that I read. There were a lot of editing mistakes and sentence structure mistakes in the beginning of the essay. Please continue to look things up in the reference book (smaller one than your book) to find the answers on correct sentence structure and grammar. In order to be prepared for my job, I have to go back to the resource book often. Rules do change so it’s a never ending battle of study. Also I highlighted some phrases or words in yellow that you use repeatedly. If you describe a room or situation in one way try describing another room in another way. Thank you for your hard work. Your grade is on the next page.

95%= A / -05 points for editing in the beginning of your paper.