Quizzes and Drills
Parts of Speech Misplaced Modifiers Drill Pronoun Reference Drill Punctuation Drill Interactive Quizzes from CFU Pronoun and Modification Quiz 1

	Why Study Grammar? Do we teach grammar just to drive our students crazy? No, of course not. In short, knowing grammar helps people write more clearly and concisely. And writing clearly is often the first way people can demonstrate their abilities and the quality of their education. So...you can think of grammar as a dialect used in acedemia. You can think of it as the understanding that will help you combine ideas more effectively. You can think of it as the tool that

Why Study Grammar?

Do we teach grammar just to drive our students crazy? No, of course not. In short, knowing grammar helps people write more clearly and concisely. And writing clearly is often the first way people can demonstrate their abilities and the quality of their education. So...you can think of grammar as a dialect used in acedemia. You can think of it as the understanding that will help you combine ideas more effectively. You can think of it as the tool that

will help your writing become more artful. The bottom line is good grammar helps your ideas shine. In short, grammar is just ducky!

A Time-Tested Approach: Find Those Subject-Verb Pairs

Subject-verb pairs are the backbone of the sentence, so find those first. Start with the verb, and ask yourself who or what is perforning that action.

Henry loves cheese.

The verb is "loves." And who loves cheese? It's Henry!

And now that you've identified the subject-verb pair, you're ready to figure out what the other words in the sentence are doing. In this case, "cheese" is the thing--or noun--that is being loved by Henry, so it's the direct object. (We'll learn about objects later.)

Can you find the subject-verb pairs in this complex sentence? Hint: there are two pairs.

Henry ate the cheese because he was hungry.

Were you able to figure out that "ate" goes with "Henry" and "was" goes with the pronnoun "he"?

Here are the other parts of the sentence: the = article (it functions as an adjective that modifies cheese), because = conjunction (it connects the two clauses), hungry = adjective that describes he.

Helpful Definitions

A phrase is a group of words that DOES NOT have a subject or a verb (it cannot be a sentence) and that functions as a single part of speech.

           with my uncle
   Ex.   running backwards
           a tall man
           to sing the blues

Clause: a group of words that has a subject and a verb

Independent (Main) Clause: expresses a complete thought

Ex. She watched a movie.

Dependent or Subordinate Clause: expresses an incomplete thought and functions as a single part of speech

Ex. If he were here,...

Parts of Speech	Grammar Topics			Punctuation	Ms. Sutter's Style Page
Overview and Exercises	Subject- Verb Agreement	Dependent Clauses: adjective, adverb and noun Clauses	Pronoun Reference	Commas	Punctuating Clauses
	Identifying Phrases and Clauses	Verbals	Pronoun Case	Colons and Semi-Colons	Run-on Sentences and Comma Splices
	Types of Phrases and Clauses	Pronoun and Antecedents	Misplaced and Ambiguous Modifiers	Punctuating Quotations	Sentence Combining

A Time-Tested Approach: Find Those Subject-Verb Pairs

Helpful Definitions

Grammar Page