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