The phrase "awkward effort" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation where someone is trying hard to do something but is doing it in a clumsy or uncomfortable manner.
Example: "His awkward effort to dance at the party made everyone smile, as he clearly was not used to moving to the music."
Alternatives: "clumsy attempt" or "ungraceful endeavor".
It was an awkward effort at best.
Yet an awkward effort to write her father's terminal cancer into this narrative of suffering suggests her feelings of alienation from it.
Though it has apparently been reworked for its London transfer, it remains an awkward effort, sometimes powerful, but at others, oddly confused.
"Haider is not Austria, and Austria is not Haider," he said at the press club in an awkward effort to distance the people of Austria from the government that they put in place -- and that he must now represent.
It has created problems for the Republicans at the presidential level – as evidenced by Mitt Romney's own lurch to the right to win the nomination, and his subsequent awkward effort to move back toward the center.
Fans have created Web sites and designed T-shirts, financed the purchase of a billboard and recorded a local-star-studded "We Are The World" parody titled "We Are LeBron," all in an endearing, if awkward, effort to keep the King among his loyal subjects in Cleveland.
After I made a few awkward efforts, my cast flew over the rope onto the sidewalk.
His occasional locker-room lingo is more natural than Richard Nixon's awkward efforts.
The awkward efforts of the Gore campaign have been boggled by the amiable cleverness of his challenger.
The awkward efforts of the Gore campaign have been boggled by the amiable cleverness of his challenger..
Plenty of shows on network prime time -- "Happy Endings," "Modern Family," "Glee" -- have moved past strenuous and awkward efforts at integration to something more natural and evolved.
