Academic writing Paragraphs

ENGL 101

What is academic writing?

• This is the type of writing you will use in your college classes.

• It is a formal type of writing

• Must use complete sentences and it must be organized in a certain way

What is a sentence?

• A group of words that contains a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought.

• A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a period(punctuation).

• A sentence should contain at least one subject and one verb: – The subject tells who or what did something. It is a

noun or pronoun.

– The verb tells an action, or links the subject with the rest of the sentence.

Verbs

• Action verb: name an action

– My roommate lost his keys. Object:

(receives action of verb )

Subject Verb

• Linking verb: link the subject with the rest of the sentence. They do not have objects.

– Soccer and tennis are my favorite sports.

Subject Verb

Examples

• My youngest brother is in high school.

S V

• My youngest brother is in high school.

• He watches TV and does homework at the same time.

S V O V O

• He watches and does at the same time.

TV homework

Sentence structures

• There are four kinds of sentences in English:

Simple

Compound

Complex

Compound complex

• For now we will learn about simple.

Simple Sentence

• A simple sentence is a sentence that has ONE subject-verb pair.

• The subject in a simple sentence may be compound:

– My brother and I are different.

• The verb in a simple sentence may be compound:

– They laughed and cried at the same time.

• Each is simple because it has only one subject- verb pair.

Examples

Simple Sentence Formulas

1. My younger sister speaks English well. S V

2. My mother and father speak English well. S S V

3. My mother and father speak and write English well.

S S V V

4. My parents will retire soon. S V

5. Then they will move into a smaller apartment or live with my older brother and his family.

S V V

Connecting

• Sometimes we need to connect words or groups of words in a sentence- we do this by using connecting words or conjunctions.

Compound Sentences

• Has two or more subject-verb combinations.

• These two or more combinations are joined by a coordinator.

• There are seven coordinating conjunctions in English: – For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So.

– easy way to remember: “FANBOYS”

• Put a comma after the first simple sentence and before the coordinating conjunction.

Example

• The computer crashed, so I lost all of my work.

– The computer crashed. 1st simple sentence

– I lost all of my work. 2nd simple sentence

– So. Coordinating conjunction

Common Rules • A comma and a coordinating conjunction

connect the two parts of a compound sentence.

• FAN BOYS

• Don’t confuse a compound sentence with a simple sentence that has a compound verb.

Example: – My family goes camping every summer and

usually has fun. (S V V)= simple

– My family goes camping every summer, and we usually have fun. (S V, and S V)= compound