Email Service Notes (Nick)

Your Original Email

My favorite sport is running. Two years ago, I started to try to participate in the trail running competition. When I was running on the hill, I slipped three times, but it didn’t matter, so I continued to finish the contest. My friends and I signed up for the cross-country race in Hangzhou in November this year. In order to maintain my strength, I will run twice a week. Running is a popular kind of exercise. Because it can build up my strength, make me healthy and relaxed. If you are involved in it, you can get more pleasure.

Your Edited Email

My favorite sport is running. Two years ago, I started to try to participate in the trail running competitions. When I was running on a the hill, I slipped three times, but it didn’t matter, so I continued on to finish / So I continued and finished the contest. My friends and I signed up for the cross-country race in Hangzhou in November of this year. In order to maintain my strength, I will run twice a week. Running is a popular kind of exercise, because it can build up my your strength and make me you healthy and relaxed.** If you are involved in it ,you can get more pleasure.

** These two sentences, as you wrote them, were not appropriately connected. First, when you use “because” it should normally be between two parts of a sentence, not right after a period. Second, the meaning was wrong. In the first part you were talking in general: “running is popular” This is the passive voice because you did not indicate who likes to go running and, in fact, this is not important to the sentence. However, the second sentence focused on the benefits that running gives YOU (the opinion and experience of Polly), and the popularity of running in general cannot be the reason for the benefits that you get from running. This is a problem since “because” is used to show the reason for something.

So instead, I substituted “you” in the second sentence. This “you” doesn’t really mean the person I am talking to, but is a sort of dummy subject that refers to people in general. This is the same “you” that you use in the next sentence. Thus, in this form, the two sentences can be connected since they are now both talking about running in general. If this is confusing, please ask about it in class and your teacher will be able to discuss it with you!