One of my common grammar mistakes is sentence fragment. I always write incomplete sentences when I write my essays. According to Writing Academic English (Oshima A, Hogue A, 2006, P183), the key to solve this problem is to remember that a complete sentence must contain at least one main or independent clause. Refer to Writing Academic English, “an independent clause contains a subject and a verb and express a complete thought” (Oshima A, Hogue A, 2006, P163). For example, “I am writing my assignment.”, it is a independent clause. Another key to avoid sentence fragment is to pay attention to the sentences with subordinators, such as although, since, because, if, before and so on. Make sure that every clause beginning with these words is attached to an independent clause. For instance, “Before we make the detailed plan, we need some more facts and figures.”, it is a sentence with correct usage of “before”. As I hold to the tenet that theory should be united with practice, I will do some exercise then.
Practice: to correct the followed sentence.
Right: Everybody in this village knows that April is fond of hunting.
Right: To study a foreign language, we should buy a good dictionary.
Right: Having finishing my composition, I had nothing to do.
Right: Sailing on and on, they discovered a new island.
Right: He succeeded because he had worked hard.
5 comments:
OMG!i have the same problem!!!! You are like a tutor...though not a professional one.. your article is helpful to me! Will i be penalised if i leave my comment in incomplete sentence? I think the reason we make such mistakes is that we get used to talk in incomplete sentences so that when we write, we just let it out like we talk! so we'd better talk in complete sentence!!
Its good to provide words like although, if, since; however, we have to becareful on some grammar rules again. For instance, when you use although you cannot use but. =)
Hi! Incomplete sentences will no doubt affect the content that we want to deliver to the readers. It is good that you are able to track your own grammar mistake. In my opinion, to prevent such mistakes, after you finish a paragraph, try to read it and rephrase it to see whether the sentence structure and the flow of idea is accurate or not. By doing so, we are able to minimize grammar mistakes in our essays. All the best :)
Zheng
Haha, this is a comman error especially for chinese speaker.In chinese sentence structure and grammar,fragment is allowed to be standalone.It is quite different from english.We have to put more effort to overcome this problem.
Your article clearly introduces how to write a sentence correctly. It's really helpful.
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