HW6

Colons and Semicolons Dire c t e d L e arning Ac t iv it ie s — P unct uat ion & M e chanic s 05

Essential Question How are semicolons and colons different and how is each used in writing?

Purpose Upon completion of this activity, students will understand the differences between semicolons and

colons.

This DLA should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.

Before You Begin To complete this DLA, you will need to view the video “Semicolons and Colons” from the Texas A & M

University’s University Writing Center and respond to the following about the video:

1) Describe the semicolon:

2) How is a semicolon used?

3) Describe the colon:

4) How is a colon used?

Exercise The following short passages come from Claude M. Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us

and What We Can Do. In these short passages, add either a colon or a semicolon (or maybe both) where

appropriate and, after each passage, state why you chose the punctuation mark(s) you did, referring to

the rules you listed above.

1) My second visit to Ann Arbor made me aware of what should have been obvious I had become

an observer of minority students and their achievement struggles.

2) The second striking thing I saw on this trip was a graph depicting student grades. It was my first

glimpse of an important fact that the academic troubles of black students at Michigan were not

entirely due to weaker academic skills and motivations.

3) Maalouf’s book describes the power of identity threat to lay claim to our psyches “People often

see themselves in terms of whichever one of their allegiances is most under attack. And

sometimes when a person doesn’t have the strength to defend that allegiance, he hides it.”

4) A second study divided [a] group of similarly aged boys into groups….But this time the tables

they were given made they choose an overall strategy of allocation [of points] one that always

allocated points equally between boys of the two groups one that maximized the joint profit of

boys from both groups and one that always maximized the profit of boys from their group over

boys from the other group, even when doing do would net “their” boy fewer points than a more

equitable strategy.

5) Treisman’s study began with an observation he made in the first-year calculus course he taught

at Berkeley it was the same observation I was to make later on when I visited the University of

Michigan and saw the grades of black and white students broken down by their entering SAT

scores.

Review your answers with an instructor or tutor in the Virtual Writing & Reading Center. Be sure you can

answer the essential question above.