Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
examples: As the man was walking into the store and Grabbing her coat with
one hand and her hat with the other
Now that we know what introductory elements are, we can start to talk about
why we need to use a comma after them. Id like you all to take 30 seconds to turn
and talk with a partner to see if you can come up with a reason that we use
commas after introductory elements. Alright, I heard some good things as I was
walking around the room. Can anybody share with me what you and your partner
were talking about? Why is it important that we use commas after introductory
elements? Right, they help us understand how the sentence parts are separated.
Write that in your first blank there. Someone else give me another reason. Yes, they
also help us to understand the meaning of the sentence. Nice job. Can anybody give
me the last reason? Thats right, they help us to correctly read the sentence aloud.
Take 10 seconds and make sure that you and your neighbor have the same three
points written down for why we need to use commas after introductory elements.
Okay, so now we know what introductory elements are and we know why we
need to use a comma afterwards. Can I get a volunteer to read this next sentence
on your notes out loud? Just the first part please. Take a second and think about how
that sounded. Now can I have that same person read the second sentence? What
did you notice about the two sentences? Exactly, the first sentence was unclear. Did
you have a hard time reading the first one? It was difficult to understand what the
message was trying to convey and there were no clear pauses, so the lack of a
comma made it difficult to read the sentence aloud. Once the comma was added in,
the sentence parts were separated and easily identifiable, we were better able to
understand the meaning of the sentence, and it was much easier to read the
sentence aloud.
Weve talked about dependent words before in our lesson about sentence
fragments. If we have a dependent word, then it needs to be followed by another
part to the sentence or else the sentence is left incomplete. In this next section of
your notes, I have given you an acronym to help you remember some of these
common dependent words that signal you that you might have to use a comma
after your introductory element, whatever it may be. This acronym is AAAWWUBBIS
(or a-woo-bus). You can see here what each letter in the acronym stands for. This
will help you in the next section of the notes, as well as the activity that we will be
doing in just a little bit.
I have given you examples of sentences that properly use commas after
introductory elements. In this first one, from the book The Star Fisher, I have circled
the signal word for you that came from my AAAWWUBBIS acronym. I want you to
underline the whole phrase leading up to the comma so that you can see how the
sentence is separated into two parts. In the next example, which I came up with, I
want you to do the same, but this time I didnt circle anything for you. Turn to your
partner for 10 seconds to make sure that you both circled and underlined the same
things in those first two lines. Now I want you all to create your own sentences
following this same structure that weve been looking at. I have included a visual on
the bottom for you so that you can easily see what sentence structure you are
Commas After
Introductory Elements
What is an introductory element?
Ex:
o ______________
Ex:
o ______________
Ex:
Consider this sentence: Until the spring course lists will not be published.
vs.
AAAWWUBBIS
Until the spring, course lists will not be
published.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas_intro
.htm
After
As
When (whenever)
While
Until
Because
Before
If
Since
Examples
When I saw the woman, she reminded me of a bird. Though her hair was
white with age, she walked with small, quick, lively steps.
Laurence Yep, The Star Fisher
After all this time, I still remember the look on her face when I said those
words.
______________________________________________________________________________
Opener ,
sentence .