This PowerPoint tests knowledge from the Passive Sentence; Simple Sentence; and Quotations, Colons, Semicolons slides.
Compound sentences
In this PowerPoint, I cover compound sentences constructed with a comma and conjunction, a semi-colon, and a colon. Enjoy and feedback is always welcomed!
Use of quotations, colons, and semi-colons
Covers some of the basic use of quotations, colons, and semi-colons. Does no cover the usage of colons and semi-colons in creating compound sentences.
Simple Sentences
This is part of the curriculum that I teach. Check out my powerpoint.
Passive vs. Active Voice
Here is my lesson for passive vs. active voice sentences. Enjoy and please let me know what you think.
Literal vs. Figurative Meanings
While teaching English, I’ve realized that many words have literal and figurative meanings. This makes sense as language is a human/social creation. It no doubt emerged from literal observations of nature and society that later transmuted into a more metaphorical/figurative meaning. One such example is “fruitless.” Lately I have been growing plants in my rooftop apartment, and as I’ve become better acquainted with the life processes of plants, especially that of fruit, I’ve gotten insights into this word “fruitless.” It takes much energy for a plant to generate a bud and have it bloom into a flower. When these flowers are fertilized by bees or butterflies, they become transformed into fruits. However, there are many instances where a flower is not pollinated, and unfertilized it merely falls off unable to deliver its fruit. Hence, it is “fruitless.” Thus, all of the plants efforts at producing its seeds were wasted.
Unfortunately, most people forget the original meaning of a word. The literal original meaning of a word is lost and its place is left only the figurative, cut off from its original root. However, understanding the figurative meaning of a word may better help you understand its figurative meaning as well.
a not-fruitless plant
Sentence writing curriculum
Hi everyone,
After teaching English for five years in South Korea, I’ve started to gain many insights into the English language and on ways to teach it. I am starting this blog to share some of these insights as well as publicize my private English instruction services for those in Seoul, South Korea.
I’d like to start this blog entry by focusing on the importance of sentences as the unit of thought and building blocks of a paragraph and/or essay. Unfortunately, too often, writers ignore sentence structure and grammatical conventions either because they dread it, or because they find it too much a bother. However, once mastered, sentence structure and grammatical conventions can serve as tools in expressing complex and nuanced ideas.
The following is a syllabus of a sentence writing class that I currently teach. In future entries, I will also post some of my PowerPoint Presentations.
Purpose: to refine and master various types of sentence structures | |||
Activity: learn the grammatical structures, practice sentence writing | |||
class | Sentence fundamentals | Homework | |
1 | Simple | -ing opener, -ed opener | Writing 25 simple sentences |
Passive vs. Active | when to use the passive voice | (5 -ing opener, 5 -ed opener, 5 quotations, 5 semi-colons for a list) | |
Mechanics | quotations, semi-colons when listed items contain commas | (5 passive sentences) | |
2 | Compound | semi-colon, colon, commas, dashes, paranthesis | Writing 20 compound sentences |
Essential vs. nonessential | (5 semi-colon, 5 colon, 5 commas, 5 dash/paranthesis/commas) | ||
3 | Complex | noun, adjective, adverb clause | Writing 20 complex sentences |
(5 noun clause, 10 adjective clause, 5 adverb clause) | |||
4 | Sentence flow | how to create coherence in a group of sentences | Writing a paragraph |