Simple Sentences In John Steinbeck's 'The Old Man'

Paper 1: “The Old Man” In this paper I can see that this student uses simple sentences very well. This student uses a simple sentence to get right to the point, and it’s working well for this student. The student’s introduction sentence was simple, yet it caught my attention. “Sand, beach, and water are what surrounded the old man.” This sentence gives a great description and I personally think it’s a great introduction. This student seems to want to experiment with complex sentences, and I think this student is ready to experiment. “He is a quiet person who keeps to himself; he does not have much but still lives fine, and is caring to other people.” In this sentence we can already see that the student already knows how to use a semicolon. This student linked two independent clauses together with a semicolon. However, even though this student linked two in depended clauses together they used a comma in the second independent clause where it was not needed. “He does not have much but still lives fine, and is caring to other people.” In that sentence the student used a comma to separate an independent clause
It seems like this student relies heavily on commas because they are not yet aware that there are other forms of punctuation that can replace commas. “His dream, Curley and the other angry ranch hands, and his relationship with Lennie bring George’s changes.” This student added additional information, which was; “Curley and the other angry ranch hands” this student could have easily replaced these commas with dashes. Dashes can be used as parenthetical dashes to include additional information. The sentence with dashes would read something like, “His dream—Curley and the other angry ranch hands—and his relationship with Lennie bring George’s changes.” With the parenthetical dashes, the commas are replaced and the additional information is included without interrupting the flow of the