Work for Monday, November 10, 2014

[Please read entire blog entry before you begin work!]

Today you are to go to IXL and complete the following exercises at the SIXTH GRADE LEVEL:

K.1, K.2, and K.3

which help you with complete sentences and with knowing how to spot a sentence fragment or a run-on sentence.  After you complete those three exercises, you are to do (again at SIXTH GRADE):

L.1. and L.2

which help you to distinguish (which means "know the difference") between SIMPLE SENTENCES, COMPOUND SENTENCES, and COMPLEX SENTENCES.  Remember, you'll need to use all of these sentence types in your essay paper.  Finally, you are to complete (again at SIXTH GRADE):

M.1

which helps you to make sure that your pronouns are right.

To help you with L.1 and L.2, here's an overview of sentence types:

A SIMPLE SENTENCE is a complete through and usually has one subject and one predicate. Here's an example. "Larry has a dog."  "Larry" is the subject, and "has a dog." is the predicate.  But don't be fooled. Simple sentences aren't always short like that one. Here's another simple sentence, "Larry, one of my classmates at Bumpus, has a huge dog with a paws as big as my feet." That sentence has an appositive after "Larry," and then has a long prepositional phrase in the predicate. But it gives a complete thought and has just a subject and a predicate.

A COMPOUND SENTENCE is usually two simple sentences joined together by a conjunction (such as and, but, or, etc.). Here's an example. "Larry has a dog, but his mother does not like it." In that sentence are two simple sentences: 1) Larry has a dog; and 2) his mother does not like it. Both of those can stand alone as simple sentences, but in this case they are joined into one sentence by the conjunction but. That makes this a COMPOUND SENTENCE.

To understand A COMPLEX SENTENCE we must recall the difference between INDEPENDENT and DEPENDENT CLAUSES. An independent clause is called "independent" because it does not need anything else to help it stand alone as complete sentence.  If I walk into the room and say, "I ate breakfast this morning" and then sit down, you will understand that I have given you a complete thought.  That's an INDEPENDENT CLAUSE.  But if I walk into the room and say, "After I ate breakfast this morning" and then sit down, you will wonder where is the rest of my sentence.  So "After I ate breakfast this morning" is a DEPENDENT CLAUSE.  It depends on an INDEPENDENT CLAUSE in order to be a complete sentence.  Sentences that have both a DEPENDENT CLAUSE and an INDEPENDENT CLAUSE are known as COMPLEX SENTENCES.  "After I ate breakfast this morning, I threw up" is a COMPLEX SENTENCE because it has both a dependent clause and an independent clause.

So there is your overview of sentence types.  Good luck with your exercises on IXL.  Be sure to get at least to 90 percent on all six of them.  See you Wednesday.