The Sentence A Quick Recap

What is a Sentence? A sentence is a unit of language that can stand alone and make sense. Examples: – We ran. – The boy kicked the ball. – They won the game. A sentence is made up of a subject and a predicate.

What is the Subject? The subject of a sentence refers to what the sentence is about. It is often the person or thing that carries out the action of the verb.

Identify the Subject: Dogs need a lot of exercise. Children play in the park. Money is extremely important to him. Accommodation is expensive in that area. People are beginning to leave. Now check your answers …

Identify the Subject: Dogs need a lot of exercise. Children play in the park. Money is extremely important to him. Accommodation is expensive in that area. People are beginning to leave. In these examples, the subjects are nouns.

Identify the Subject: A heat wave has been forecast. Those terrible floods killed many people. The large black dog bit the child. Fluffy, my loving cat, has just died. Four unhappy customers have complained. Now check your answers …

Identify the Subject: A heat wave has been forecast. Those terrible floods killed many people. The large black dog bit the child. Fluffy, my loving cat, has just died. Four unhappy customers have complained. In these examples, the subjects are noun phrases.

Identify the Subject: We lost the battle. They were found guilty. You have nothing to worry about. He denied the charge. It has been very emotionally draining. Now check your answers …

Identify the Subject: We lost the battle. They were found guilty. You have nothing to worry about. He denied the charge. It has been very emotionally draining. In these examples, the subjects are pronouns.

What is the Predicate? The predicate refers to the part of a sentence that gives information about the subject. It is basically all the parts of a sentence that are not contained in the subject. It contains the verb.

Identify the Predicate: The tired old man slept soundly. Jane fainted. Peter was rich and powerful. The naughty child threw a tantrum. It was a blisteringly hot day. All of a sudden, the lights went out. Now check your answers …

Identify the Predicate: The tired old man slept soundly. Jane fainted. Peter was rich and powerful. The naughty child threw a tantrum. It was a blisteringly hot day. All of a sudden, the lights went out.

What’s the problem? The two most common problems with your sentence structure is the fragment and the run-on.

What is a Fragment? A fragment is a group of words that don’t express a complete thought. It is an incomplete sentence. Example: – An incomplete sentence. A common cause of a fragment is the absence of the subject or the verb. – IT [subject] IS [verb] an incomplete sentence.

What is a Run-On? A run-on sentence is two or more sentences incorrectly written as a single sentence. Sometimes the run-on is punctuated with a comma (comma splice). Other times there is no punctuation at all. We have seen examples of run-ons in your writing where one sentence extends the length of a page!!!! No jokes.

Why is this important? Fragments: – We do not consider a fragment to be acceptable answer to a comprehension question and we will not mark it! Run-Ons: – A run-on is an basic error in sentence structure. You need to move on to mature writing free of these primary school problems.

So what now? Identify and correct the fragments and run- ons in the worksheets that you will be given.