A Review of Some Basic English Grammar

When I first came out of the military years ago and started teaching, I was given some sage advice from a veteran teacher who said to me, " Assume that the student knows nothing and you will never go wrong." That is what I thought of as I prepared my thoughts for this report.
We convey our thoughts in written English through what is called the SENTENCE. I define a sentence as a group of words containing THREE things:
1. a VERB
2. a SUBJECT
3. a a COMPLETE THOUGHT
When you analyze a group of words to see whether or not it is a sentence, first look to see if it has a verb. The verb is the action word. Next, look to see who or what is doing that action. The answer to that question is the subject. Lastly, look to see if the group of words is a complete thought. Does it make sense? Can it stand by itself? Let us now look at a group of words and analyze them in the way I just described:........JOHN WALKED DOWN THE STREET. Find the verb first.......The verb is the action word and that is "WALKED"......Now look for who or what is doing that action.......The answer to that question is "John". Then John is the subject.....John=subject...walked=verb....Do we have a complete thought? Yes....John walked down the street......Then we have all the elements of a sentence: verb,subject, and complete thought. If one were missing, we would call it a SENTENCE FRAGMENT.
The next thing we talked about were the Three kinds of sentences. They are as follows;
l. the SIMPLE SENTENCE; John walked down the street.
2. the COMPLEX SENTENCE; As I was walking down the street, I met my friend.
3. the COMPOUND SENTENCE: I walked down that street;however, I didn't
meet my friend.
I want you to notice how these sentences are punctuated because I will come back to this in a later post. Of course we talked about other basic principles, but my battery is running low so I will have to sign off. Say a little prayer that my 89 Olds passes inspection this afternoon........Bye for now....Oh,by the way, if you would like to "COMMENT" on a blog, just click on "COMMENT" and type what you want. You don't have to be a member of the blog to comment....