RLA 1.3

Hi! We're going to do a lot of work with writing this quarter. We'll start small and work our way up to the big stuff, which means that we're starting with how to make a sentence.

I know that sounds easy, but it can be surprisingly tricky.

1.) Parts of Speech

Before we can talk about sentences, we need to make sure to review the parts of speech.

Parts of Speech:

Nouns: Person, place, thing, idea

• Examples: woman, Amy, school, Tacoma, chair, dog, happiness, freedom. If it can be who or what a sentence is about, it's a noun (or pronoun like he, she, it, we).

Verbs: Action or state of being

• Examples: run, laughed, going, thinks, is, am, are, was were.

Adjectives: Describe nouns. They answer the questions what kind, which one, how many?

• Examples: blue, large, scary, interesting, that, this, five, many, few.

Adverbs: Describe verbs (and adjectives). They answer the questions how, when, where?

• Examples: quickly, slowly, ominously, yesterday, soon, there, here.

Conjunctions: Connect words, clauses, and ideas together.

• Examples: and, but, because, so, when, if, although

If a sentence doesn't have a subject, verb, or complete idea, we call it a fragment. Fragments are broken sentences. They aren't correct, and writing fragments on your GED exam might lower your score.

Watch these videos for more information about subjects, predicates, and sentence fragments.

Fragments usually have one or more of these problems

1.) No subject

2.) No verb/predicate

3.) No complete idea. This usually happens when we use a conjunction (but, because, so, if, when) incorrectly. We'll work on this problem a lot this quarter.

Fragments are never correct in formal writing, like the kind of writing you do in school, at work or on the GED test. However, Sandra Cisneros uses them in her writing. Why? Well, people speak in fragments all the time, and Sandra Cisneros writes like people talk.

Examples of Fragments from The House on Mango Street.

"I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn't it."

"The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours. My brothers for example. They've got plenty to say to Nenny and me inside the house."

Extra Practice