Academic writing Paragraphs ENGL 101
What is academic writing? • This is the type of writing you will use in your college classes. • It is a formal type of writing • Must use complete sentences and it must be organized in a certain way
What is a sentence? • A group of words that contains a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought. • A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a period(punctuation). • A sentence should contain at least one subject and one verb: – The subject tells who or what did something. It is a noun or pronoun. – The verb tells an action, or links the subject with the rest of the sentence.
Verbs • Action verb: name an action – My roommate lost his keys.
Subject
Object: (receives action of verb )
Verb
• Linking verb: link the subject with the rest of the sentence. They do not have objects. – Soccer and tennis are my favorite sports.
Subject
Verb
Examples • My youngest brother is in high school. S V • My youngest brother is in high school. • He watches TV and does homework at the same time. S V O V O • He watches TV and does homework at the same time.
Sentence structures • There are four kinds of sentences in English: Simple Compound Complex Compound complex
• For now we will learn about simple.
Simple Sentence • A simple sentence is a sentence that has ONE subject-verb pair. • The subject in a simple sentence may be compound: – My brother and I are different.
• The verb in a simple sentence may be compound: – They laughed and cried at the same time.
• Each is simple because it has only one subjectverb pair.
Examples Simple Sentence 1. My younger sister speaks English well. 2. My mother and father speak English well. 3. My mother and father speak and write English well. 4. My parents will retire soon. 5. Then they will move into a smaller apartment or live with my older brother and his family.
Formulas SV SSV
SSVV SV SVV
Connecting • Sometimes we need to connect words or groups of words in a sentence- we do this by using connecting words or conjunctions.
Compound Sentences • Has two or more subject-verb combinations. • These two or more combinations are joined by a coordinator. • There are seven coordinating conjunctions in English: – For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. – easy way to remember: “FANBOYS”
• Put a comma after the first simple sentence and before the coordinating conjunction.
Example • The computer crashed, so I lost all of my work. – The computer crashed. 1st simple sentence – I lost all of my work. 2nd simple sentence – So. Coordinating conjunction
Common Rules • A comma and a coordinating conjunction connect the two parts of a compound sentence. • FAN BOYS • Don’t confuse a compound sentence with a simple sentence that has a compound verb. Example: – My family goes camping every summer and usually has fun. (S V V)= simple – My family goes camping every summer, and we usually have fun. (S V, and S V)= compound