Students know enough grammar for writing complete sentences,
even if they write in nothing but sentence fragments.
How do we know what? Because they can speak in complete sentences.
Do they always speak in complete sentences? No.
For rhetorical reasons, they may choose not to use complete sentences,
just as I chose not to write a complete sentence in the second
paragraph on this page.
Sentence is part of given grammar
Students who grew up in an English-speaking culture will have
a tacit understanding of what a sentence is and what it isn't.
The idea of
a sentence is part of what linguists call "given grammar."
However, just because students intuitively understand the grammatical
construction of a complete sentence does not mean that complete
sentences will be the norm in their writing.
Our students come out of a predominantly oral culture. They don't
realize that writing requires them to supply clues and context
that accompany speech but are missing from written language.
Teach writing complete sentences
We have to teach students to associate the labels sentence
and nonsentence or fragment with the concepts that
underlie the language they already use.
Next, when we are teaching writing, you and I have to give students
tools so that
-
Writing complete sentences is a habit, not an accident.
-
Writing a sentence fragment is a choice, not a mistake.
All that is a big job. It's best tackled in short, regular sessions.
Sort sentences from fragments
English language and linguistics scholar Rei Noguchi provides
a simple way of distinguishing a sentence from a nonsentence that
will be simple for native English speakers. Noguchi uses
-
Tag questions
-
Yes-or-no questions
to test an item that the writer thinks is a sentence.
Please note that this process is not appropriate
for students for whom English is a second language.
Students for whom English is a second language may have absorbed
quite different grammar that will keep them from using this technique.
You must fit your teaching methods to your students.
Set 1: tags, Y/N questions applied
The process is easier to show than to discuss. I gave you several
examples so you can see how to use the simple techniques to distinguish
sentence fragments from complete sentences.
In this first set, you'll see how the tag and yes/no questions
are applied to an item we want to test to see if it is a sentence
or a fragment.
Item: The cat was in a fight.
Item with tag: The cat was in
a fight, wasn't it?
Item made into Y/N question: Wasn't
the cat in a fight?
Notice that both the tag item and the Y/N question are sensible.
Set 2: tags, Y/N questions applied
Here is a second item to test: Cats and dogs are natural enemies.
Item with tag: Cats and dogs are
natural enemies, aren't they?
Item made into yes-no question:
Aren't cats and dogs are natural enemies?
Again the tag item and the Y/N question make sense.
Set 3: tags, Y/N questions applied
Here is a third item to test: Dogs show off for their owners.
Item with tag: Dogs show off for
their owners, don't they?
Item made into Y/N question: Don't
dogs show off for their owners?
How the tags and Y/N show sentences
In each of the three sets, you can tell the test item is a complete
sentence because it makes sense
Tags & Y/N questions applied to a fragment
Try the tag test and Y/N test on this fragment I wrote earlier
on this page: Because they can speak in complete sentences.
Item with tag: Because they can
speak in complete sentences, don't they?
Item made into Y/N question: Don't
because they can speak in complete sentences?
Neither the tag item nor the Y/N question makes logical sense
(though students may think the tag item does). When an group of
words fails both the tag and Y/N question tests, you know it is
not a complete sentence.
Students cannot do this kind of testing as they compose.
They have to do it afterward when they review and edit
their writing.
If students get enough practice testing their own writing, they
will develop an intuitive sense of a complete sentence. At that
point, writing complete sentences will become their normal response
to a writing situation.
Same tricks show sentence boundaries
Besides showing whether a group of words is a sentence or not,
Noguchi's two sentence twists also show the boundaries of the
original sentence.
The sentence
boundaries need to be marked with punctuation.
One last test for completeness: nested sentence
There's one more test of whether something is a genuine sentence.
You can get a native English speaker to identify a complete a
sentence by tricking them into embedding it into another sentence.
Here's how:
1. Start with this "outside" sentence: They refused
to believe the idea that _______
2. Put your test sentence in that blank.
If the original was not a sentence, the resulting sentence will
not make sense. The resulting sentence will make sense only if
the original was a sentence and not a fragment.
Nested sentence examples
Let me show you two examples of how the nest trick points out
fragments.
Put this sentences into the nest: Cats and dogs are natural enemies.
You get a logical sentence:
They refused to believe the idea that cats and dogs are natural
enemies.
Put this into the nest: No matter how you slice it.
They refused to believe the idea that no matter how you slice
it.
It's not hard to tell the real sentence from the fragment, is
it?
What's easy for you however, may not be easy for your students.
They may not see the fragments when they do these tests.
However, they may be able to hear them.
Students may need hearing tests
Because so much of our oral culture uses fragments, students
don't readily that writing must supply clues and context
that accompany oral language.
You can teach the techniques for discovering whether something
is or is not a complete sentence to upper elementary school students.
But don't expect the lessons to produce fragment-free writing
quickly.
Like
water dripping on a rock, repeated short lessons in writing complete sentences will eventually wear away unplanned sentence fragments.
