Every sentence in formal expository writing must have an independent clause: a clause that contains a subject and a predicate. A sentence fragment has no independent clauses that are improperly connected. As you edit your practice essay, check your sentence constructions, noting any tendency toward fragments or run-on sentences.

A squirrel does not have to be taught how to gather nuts. Nor does it need to learn that it should store them for winter. A squirrel born in the spring has never experienced winter. Yet in the fall of the year it can be observed busily storing nuts to be eaten during the winter months, when there will be no food to be gathered. A bird does not need to take lessons in nest-building. Nor does it need to take courses in navigation. Yet birds do navigate thousands of miles, sometimes over open sea. They have no newspapers or TV to give them weather reports, no books written by explorer or pioneer birds to map out for them the warm areas of the earth. Nonetheless the bird "knows" when cold weather is imminent and the exact location of a warm climate even though it may be thousands of miles away.

It was easy to explain the successes. The boy with the too-big ears, who had been told that he looked like a taxi-cab with both doors open. He had been ridiculed all his life-often cruelly. Association with playmates meant humiliation and pain. Why shouldn't he avoid social contacts? Why shouldn't he become afraid of people and retire into himself? Terribly afraid to express himself in any way it was no wonder he became known as a moron. When his ears were corrected, it would seem only natural that the cause of his embarrassment and humiliation had been removed and that he should assume a normal role in life which he did.

Conversational speech is filled with slang and colloquial expressions. Slang terms and colloquialisms can be confusing to the reader, since these expressions are not universally understood. Even worse, such informal writing may give readers the impression that you are poorly educated or arrogant.

One of the earliest and most convincing experiments was conducted by the late Prescott Lecky, one of the pioneers in self-image psychology. Lecky conceived of the personality as a "system of ideas," all of which must seem to be consistent with each other. Ideas which are inconsistent with the system are rejected, "not believed," and not acted upon. Ideas which are inconsistent with the system are accepted. At the very center of this system of ideas "the keystone" the base upon which all else is built, is the individual's "ego ideal," his "self-image," or his conception of himself. Lecky was a school teacher and had an opportunity to test his theory upon thousands of students.

Occasionally self-reference may be appropriate in your essays. You may even call yourself I if you want, as long as you keep the number of first-person pronouns to a minimum. Less egocentric ways of referring to the narrator include we and one. If these more formal ways of writing seem stilted, stay with I.

The method of self-reference you select is called the narrative voice of your essay. Any of the above narrative voices are acceptable. Nevertheless, whichever you choose, you must be careful not to shift narrative voice in your essay. If you use I in the first sentence, for example, do not use we in a later sentence.