The phrase "an effort to express" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing attempts to communicate thoughts, feelings, or ideas.
Example: "The artist made an effort to express her emotions through her paintings."
Alternatives: "a attempt to convey" or "an endeavor to articulate".
In an effort to express social rebellion, teenagers may horrify their parents by piercing themselves or by dyeing their hair blue.
The patterned, pulsing black and white paintings began as an effort to express her feelings to a lover after a failed affair.
So it is not surprising that Alex, 5, is taking a summer dance class, bopping up and down in an air-conditioned first-grade classroom and making intense, scary faces in an effort to express the word mysterious.
In Tempera "If at times my productions do not express the conventionally beautiful, there is always an effort to express the universal beauty of man's continuous struggle to lift his social position and to add dimension to his spiritual being".
They are a kind of American bonsai, the miniaturization of an expansive territorial urge, an effort to express in the malleability of boxwood and yew the restlessness of the American spirit.
In an effort to express what it is to which this method gives access, Husserl wrote: In all pure psychic experiences (in perceiving something, judging about something, willing something, enjoying something, hoping for something, etc).
"While recent efforts at protest have proved ineffective and disappointing, we hope that any efforts to express public anger is channeled at our state officials, not the regents.
"Most of the staff had never seen a senator and certainly had never had one make such a meaningful effort to express his or her appreciation," Mr. Ziglar said.
"I made a concerted effort to express my feelings in the reading -- certain feelings I have about his work -- and for me it was wonderful".
He preferred Oceanic art "for its immemorial effort to express the interpenetration of the physical and the mental, to triumph over the dualism of perception and representation".
Unfortunately, our singer remains very much clothed, and spends almost the entirety of the video making little effort to express any emotions other than mild interest directed towards a flesh coloured bra about two minutes in.
