You’ve just completed a grammar refresher and developed some new skills. You’ve learned to avoid sentence fragments and run-on sentences and learned to build effective sentences. You should be able to apply your sentence-building skills to the task of building paragraphs.
In turn, you should be able to apply your paragraph-building skills to creating a larger piece of writing. You’ve learned that sound paragraphing is essential for effective writing in both formal and informal
English. You’ve also studied how to use formal and informal
English to compose personal letters and some common types of business letters. Finally, you’ve learned how to use the skills you’ve developed to start to write an essay on a topic of your choice.
KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER
Grammar is a set of guidelines to help you to write.
A noun is a naming word. A pronoun replaces a noun. An adjective modifies or explains a noun.
A verb is a word that expresses action or helps to make a statement.
When a verb contains more than one word, it’s called a verb phrase. A verb phrase always contains a helping verb.
An adverb modifies or explains a verb. An adverb also may modify an adjective.
A preposition is a word used to show the relationship of a noun or a pronoun to some other word in the sentence. A prepositional phrase is a group of words that begins with a preposition and ends with a noun or pronoun.
A conjunction is a word that joins words or groups of words.
Coordinating conjunctions link relatively equal parts of sentences.
Correlative conjunctions are always found in pairs.
An interjection is a word used to show feeling.
An independent clause contains a subject and predicate and can stand alone as a sentence.
A dependent (subordinate) clause contains a subject and predicate but can’t stand alone. It depends