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In Your Own Words, Describe The Method Used In The Class To Decrease The Number Of "To Be" Verbs In Your Writing?

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Samantha Mitchell Profile
Unfortunately, this question is slightly difficult to answer since one has to be in the class to describe the method used in that particular class. However, we can offer some suggestions on how to reduce the number of "To Be" verbs in your writing.

The verb "To Be" is one of the most important verbs for the English language. The present tense verbs are I am, You are, He/She/It is, We are, You are, and They are. Past Tense is I was, You were, He/She/It was, We were, You were, and They were. The perfect form is I have been and the progressive form is I am being. You also have the variations in perfect and progressive forms like You, He, etc. The exercise to reduce the "To Be" verb in writing is to make writing more precise and purposeful. 

Here are a few ways to reduce the "To Be" verb:
  • Find a substitute that works just as well. A sentence such as "that cherry pie is good" could be "that cherry pie tastes good." The word taste offers a better description.
  • Rearranging the sentence to get rid of the verb such as "the man was in the dark tunnel" could become "down the dark tunnel moved a man."
  • You can also change another word in the sentence to a verb, for example "Charles Shultz founded the Peanuts strip" instead of "Charles Shultz was the founder..."
  • Combining sentences not only reduces the number of words you need, but also adds to the sentence reducing your "To Be" usage. Writing with different verbs adds to your content taking away the simplistic language, so your teacher probably wants you to use the four methods mentioned above.

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