A miserable dog family

Question

Hi,I wrote the following to record what I saw to sharpen my English a bit. Correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.Last night, I ran into a dog family on a dim dusty street when I was biking home. The helpless and miserable eyes of the dog's parents caught my eyes in particular. It suddenly came to mind that they apparently had no home to go and no way to make a decent living, just lying on the street side dirty, smelly, and hungry. What a sad thing it is! There is just nothing the dog family can do about it!The images just keep occuring in my mind. I'm happy that it's not my family, but meanwhile I'm starting to worry that one day or in next life my family could be like that! What causes this to happen in the first place? Is it God's will or their bad karma?

Benny777 · Accepted Answer

Hello, I appreciate some of your writing, I especially like your ability to use adjectives to bring your nouns to life! There are a couple of things I would like to point out.

Last night, I ran into a dog family. I'm unsure what "dog family" refers to.

"apparently had no home to go", you want to add the preposition "to" after go, in order to express a movement of direction, which would be to hom.

Then the last two sentences in your first paragraph are both present tense. One general rule that you will find in the English language, is that it's best to maintain the same verb tense, unless you purposely want to show a sequence of events. It's awkward for whoever is reading it to go from reading the past tense to switching to the present tense all of a sudden, it doesn't flow correctly. So instead of "What a sad thing it is" , you want to use the past tense of is, which is "was". Then remember, because you are still speaking about what went through your mind in a previous time period, you again want to put the last sentence in past tense. Use the past tense form of "is", and then use the past tense form of can. After you've made the alterations, say it out loud to see if it sounds better to you, which it should.

In the sentence after your first paragraph, you use the correct verb tense. The reason why it's ok to speak in the present when you say "the images keep occurring", is because you are trying to express what it happening right now. For this reason, it is now ok to use the present tense whereas before you weren't supposed to.

Read out loud "or in next life", does it sound correct to you? Do you think you might be missing a word that shows whose life you are referring to?

I love the way you end the paper, by asking a question. The reason why I love the way you end it is because you are engaging whoever is reading your paragraph, forcing them to ask themselves a question which involves them in the text. Solid ending.

I hope this was helpful, feel free to send me a message if what I said was unclear or you have further questions.

Angliholic · Answer