📝 Sentence chaos and how to fix it 📝

Look at this sentence from an IELTS essay written by a student.

📝 "Younger people who do community service for free may be instilled with the spirit of community and develop empathy, sensitivity to others' needs, and make choices that benefit everyone, thereby fostering community prosperity."

The source of chaos is the abundance of elements that are not properly connected. What is an element? Different things can be elements, but in this case it's verbs and nouns. I'll underline them for convenience.

"Younger people who do community service for free may be instilled with the spirit of community and develop empathy, sensitivity to others' needs, and make choices that benefit everyone, thereby fostering community prosperity."

1️⃣ Verbs

We have three verbs, one of which is passive and two active. This is not good already. Even worse is the fact that all three are connected with "and." "And" must only be used before the last element (unless you are using a stylistic device called polysyndeton, which, of course, you shouldn't be doing in IELTS).

2️⃣ Nouns

We have two nouns here "develop empathy, sensitivity." The nouns are not connected with a conjunction, which is a crime against nouns if you ask me (unless you are using a stylistic device called asyndeton, which, of course, you shouldn't be doing in IELTS).

My rewrite:

📝 "Younger people who do community service for free will develop empathy and sensitivity to other people's needs, making choices that benefit everyone and thereby fostering community prosperity."

Now all the elements are wonderfully connected.

You will have noticed that I've deleted "be instilled with the spirit of community." It doesn't really contribute much to meaning - no reason to keep it.

Other rewrites? Share in the comments. 📝