Grammar
Structure
It's a Thinkin' Thing
Major and Minor Details
What is This All About?
100
A piece of punctuation that acts like a rolling stop at a stop sign.
What is the semicolon?
100
When thinking of the structure of our papers, every paper in this class must end with one of these.
What is a conclusion?
100
Whenever you have been assigned a paper to write, you should spend several minutes doing this before you begin drafting up your paper.
What is pre-writing?
100
These details directly explain the main idea sentence.
What are major supporting details?
100
This word or phrase runs throughout your paper and is the thing that your major and minor supporting details explain.
What is the controlling thought or abstract idea?
200
When two or more sentences have been joined incorrectly, with either no punctuation or with only a comma.
What is a run-on sentence?
200
In this paragraph,one sentence is out of place: "After seeing that her team could not work well together to create and implement the new program, Patty changed the game plan. First, she divided the team into small groups. Then after the teams were finished with their individual parts of the project and had the presentation together, Patty made an appointment for the boss, Mr. Osley, to come to see how the things were going. Next, each group was assigned one part of the project to prepare and manage. As the groups worked on their individual parts of the project, they also met in a large group meeting each week to see how the overall project was advancing. When Mr. Osley came, he listened to the team's project coordinators share about the new program and was very impressed. It was a huge success."
What is "Then after the team had the presentation together, Patty made an appointment for the boss, Mr. Osley, to come to see how the project was moving along."
200
April talked to you about similes and metaphors. The following sentence is an example of this: "Barb and Anna finished their testing quick as lightning."
What is a simile?
200
These details explain the major supporting details and are the most concrete details in the whole paper.
What are minor supporting details?
200
In the sentence "There are several things I enjoy when I ski during the winter time," the abstract or controlling idea that runs throughout the paper would be:
What is several things I enjoy?
300
Type of sentence: Margaret, Susan, and Naomi got up early on Black Friday, ate breakfast at Denny's, and then shopped the rest of the day.
What is a simple sentence?
300
To move your reader from one supporting idea to the next, you should use these devices.
What are transitions?
300
In order to solve sentence fragments, writers must examine the fragmented group of words to see if there are these three things. (HINT: these are three things a complete sentence must have.)
What is a subject, a verb, and a complete idea?
300
In the following paragraph, these are sorely missing: I enjoy skiing for a variety of reasons. First of all, I love the physical exercise it provides. Next, it gives our family some wonderful time together. Finally, skiing allows me to get outside and enjoy nature. As you can see, skiing has provided much joy to my life.
What are minor supporting details?
300
If this sentence begins an essay . . . "In this world, most of the people you meet will come and go too quickly, but those who remain and have the qualities of a true friend will stay forever," the essay's controlling idea will be about this.
What are the qualities of a true friend?
400
Type of sentence: The church youth group collected money for the Thanksgiving basket drive, and then they put together 50 baskets for various families in the community.
What is a compound sentence?
400
This pre-writing strategy is used to organize your ideas before beginning a draft of your paper.
What is and outline or map/web?
400
In the sentence "Me and my friends have been hanging out all weekend," this word is mis-used. Why?
What is Me? It's wrong because Me is an object pronoun, and a subject pronoun should be used in that position of the sentence.
400
April spoke about metaphors and similes. The following sentence is an example of this: "Early in the morning, Carmen moved around like the walking dead."
What is a simile?
400
The main idea sentence appears on a student's paper and says "Several things I appreciate about my mother." The teacher would mark this as one of these sentence errors.
What is a sentence fragment?
500
In the sentence . . . Phillipe and his little dog took a long walk around the block . . . Phillipe and dog are the what? in the sentence.
What is the subject?
500
In most of your essays, this should be found in the introduction or be the first sentence in your paper.
What is the thesis/main idea sentence/topic sentence?
500
The following sentence is correct as written: Its been a tough semester this fall. True or False?
What is False because "its" is a possessive pronoun, and you would need to use "it's" in that sentence.
500
The following sentence is a good example of this type of sentence: "The class, which worked tirelessly all through the semester, earned a party for the last day of class."
What is a complex sentence?
500
The following sentence "Every time I drive my father's Porche, you feel the power of its engine" is an example of this type of grammatical error.
What is pronoun shift from "I" to "you."
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