Understanding Sentences

A sentence is commonly defined as a group of words that express a complete thought or idea. A sentence must be about one thing, the subject and some action that happens in ralition to the subject and the verb. In some the situition, the verb instead of expressing action, link or connect two parts of sentence. The subject and verb form the core parts of sentences and carry its essential meaning. However, sentence can contain many other parts, and they can vary widely in pattern and complexity.

A. Recognizing complete sentence

A complete thought is one that supplies enough information to give you the full meaning being expressed by the writer. Incomplete thoughts give you only partial information.

B. Indentifying core part

Sentence in written engish, a group of words must fulfill three condition. It must contain a subject, a verb and express a complete thought. 1. Sentence Modifiers Once you have indenfied the core parts of sentence. The next step is to determine how the meaning of those core parts is changed or modified by the remainder of the sentence. These reamaining parts, called modifiers, provide you with further information about one of the core parts. 2. Multiple Core Parts Multiple core parts are some sentence may have more than one subject and / or more than one verb. Modifier provide relatively unimportant additional information to which, you should pay a little attention. At the other times modifiers qualify, limit, or restrict the meaning of the core parts and significantly alter their meaning.

C. Recognizing Relationship Among Ideas

Many sentences express more than one idea. A writer combines closely related ideas into one sentence to make the connection between them clearer and easier to understand. There are two basic sentence pattern commonly used to combine ideas. It is useful to be familiar with each type because they provide the reader with very useful clues about the relationship and realative important of the ideas.

1. Sentence that combine ideas

When two or more equally important ideas are vary closely related, a writer may combine them into single sentence. This is done for three reasons. To emphasize their relationship To indicate their equal importance To make the material more concise and easier to read Equal ideas are combined by using either a semicolon or a comma along with one of the following words : and , but, or, either- or, neither- nor. 2. Sentence that relate ideas Expanding sentence by adding related, but less important, ideas to the base sentence. While these less important ideas have their own core parts, they depend on the base sentence to complete their meaning.

D. Identifying core parts complicated sentence

Identiying core parts as you read becomes more difficult as sentence become longer and more complicated. And as additional information is added. The reason why the authors write long complicated sentence. 1. To eliminate the need to write many short, simple sentence 2. The information is expressed in a shorter more compact way, and repetition is difficult.

E. Punctuation an aid to sentence comprehension.

Punctuation can be a guide, or marker for the location of sentence core parts. It may also separate the core parts of sentence from other words and phrases in the sentence. Punctuation makes a real differences and help reading in several ways. 1. It mark the end of a sentence and separates them from one another 2. It separate the various part of sentence 3. It tell specific things about the arrangement and relative importance of the various part of a sentence. Punctuation marks can, for example separate the core parts from the remainder of sentence. Various type of punctuation may also suggest the relationship of the core parts to the remainder of the sentence. Kind of Punctuation Mark 1. The comma ( , ) The comma has a number of different uses, but in each case it separate some type of information from other part of the sentence. The different uses of the comma are explained below. The introductory use

The comma can be used separate introductory beginning or opening parts of sentence often begin with some type of introductory phrase that connects what will be said in one sentence with what has already been said in a previous sentence. Introductory phrases such as realizing this as you know, upon careful consideration, after it rain, all serve to introduce or lead into the main idea presented in the core parts of the sentence. Parenthetical use The comma can be used to separate additional information from the main part of sentence, and also used before or after parenthetical information. The comma should help to tell important from less important information and should aid to identify the sentences core parts. The serial use The comma can be used to separate a list or series from the core parts of the sentence. Many different type of item may be given in a series single words such as nouns or adjectives, as well as clauses and phrases are all separateed by comma when they are part of a list. Related Ideas The comma can be used to join closely related, and complete ideas within single sentence. When used in this way, the comma must be used with conjunction or connecting word, some of the most commonly used conjunction are and, or, nor, but and for. This use of comma tells you that there are actually two complete but related ideas within a sentence.

2. The Semicolon ( ; ) The primary use of the semicolons is to separate two very closely related ideas which have been combined into a single sentence. Use of the semicolon is similar to use of the comma to separate complete and related ideas in one sentence. The semicolon can be used alone without conjunction. A semicolon is used to separate part which, if divided by commas would be confusing or difficult to read.

3. The Colon ( : ) The colon is used to introduce a list, statement, or quotation. The colon tell that some type of additional information which further explains the main idea of a sentence is to follow. The colon slab serves as a marker indicating that the sentences core parts precede the colon.

4. The Dash ( - ) The dash is most commonly used in sentence to separate unessential or parenthetical elements from the core sentence. When using a comma would be confusing. The usage also assists the reader in separating core parts from supporting information.