GED Language Arts Study Guide

when defining words found in a text often words have a definition that is more than the dictionary definition so we can say the words have two definitions that denotative meaning and it connotated me the denotative meaning is the literal meaning of the word so basically if you're wondering what the word meant and it's the denotative meaning then you can just look up the words in dictionary and the dictionary definition would describe the meaning of that word however the connotative meaning of the word also involves the emotional reaction a word may invoke it depends on the readers associations they may make with that word so it goes further than the denotative meaning and so denotative meanings are generally used in non-fiction works whenever in a nonfiction work the writer isn't trying to be flowery or use figurative language so the actual definition of the word is what the word means in that context however in fiction works the Connaught ativ meaning of a word also is often meant so it's important that readers learn to differentiate between when the connotative or denotative word or denotative meaning is being used and so the reader can usually determine by the context clues whether the author is using the denotative or connotative meaning of a word of writing should have a logical conclusion and it's your job as the reader to identify that conclusion mainly for the purpose of helping you to understand whether you agree with the writer or not because you don't want to just read a piece of literature you want to analyze it so one step in that process to better understanding it is identifying the conclusion to know whether you agree with the writer or not so now I want to talk about how to identify that conclusion so you're going to need to infer a lot or make an inference and to infer something just means to take what you already know and combine it with something else to draw a conclusion so it's pretty pretty self-explanatory and so what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to combine two things what you already know with the info or the information found in the text so I'm going to draw a double arrow there because to make an inference you're pulling these two things together everything you find in the text any pre knowledge you have and you're pulling that together to draw the conclusion and generally a conclusion should be obvious if a writer does a good job and they're writing then the conclusion should be easily identifiable otherwise you may draw a conclusion that is not the conclusion the writer had in mind but nevertheless it's important that you as the reader analyze the writing and identify the logical conclusion summarizing text you need to be able to state the main point of a story so a summary is just stating the main point of a story so you're reading an entire story and then you're just taking the important things and writing about that if you've ever looked at the back of a book you'll see a summary on the back of a book and so there's a whole book that maybe a hundred or two hundred pages but the author summarizes it on the back of the book so that you get an idea of what it's about so that's what you're trying to do through a summary so there's four main points that you should remember when writing a summary focus like I already said on the main idea of the story focus on the key points in other words you're not worried about little details you're worried about the important things that contribute to the overall storyline the third point focus on the conclusion of a story because in most stories there's some kind of problem the whole plot is based based around some kind of problem throughout the story then eventually that problem is resolved and so that happens in the conclusion of the story so look at the conclusion of the story and talk about that too in your summary so you're going to be talking about the main idea the story the key points the problem you know maybe a little bit about the main character and then talk about the end of the story and how that character ended up dealing with his or her problem then the fourth point is kind of a longer one focus on important information the author want the reader to know so throughout the story you may notice certain points that the author really wants the reader to understand and so look for that important information and include that in the summary as well and so a summary is typically one paragraph in length so it's not very long because it does not need to be long because you're not focusing on details you're just focusing on the overall story and so remember again you're looking for important information and so we're not interested in details try not to even think about the details just look for the main idea of the story now in some cases you might be writing a summary for a long story with multiple settings and scenes and so a summary may be a few paragraphs in length and these paragraphs give the main points of each major part of the story and so the summary of a long story always includes a conclusion to wrap up the story as an entirety so like I said the summary is usually gonna be one paragraph but if it's a really long story that has lots of different settings lots of different scenes lots of different problems throughout the plot you made it may need to write a paragraph for each main point or major part of the story and then for that summary you're going to write a few paragraphs and then you're going to write a conclusion that's going to kind of summarize that whole story and so only make a summary longer than one paragraph if you feel like you cannot include all the important information in one paragraph so again a summary states the main point of a story in some circumstances it's important to be able to synthesize text so what we're going to do is we're going to read this story and then we're going to work on synthesizing or paraphrasing it so we'll get to that in a minute but first let's read this story so Emanuel went swimming in the lake by his house where the water reached a depth of 20 feet in the middle he did not venture out more than six feet into the water however so now we want to paraphrase this which means stating the author's ideas in the readers own words so what we're doing here is kind of like a summary and in fact you may have already thought oh that sounds just like summarizing but it's a little bit different because a summary typically involves including the main points of a longer text such as a novel or full story well this is not a full story and it's definitely not a novel it's just a couple sentences so when you paraphrase you're taking a couple sentences or an entire paragraph and you're including the main point of the text being reviewed because that's what the reader needs to know about the text so in this example up here the reader needs to know that Emanuel went swimming in the lake but not more than six feet out those are the important points it's not really important the reader understands that the water reaches a depth of 20 feet so we want to focus on the main points here to kind of summarize it but in other words just take a couple sentences and state it in our own words and so in this case a good paraphrase would be Emanuel went swimming six feet out and the lake by his house Emanuel went swimming six feet out in the lake by his house so that's a paraphrase of this up here we're just taking the main points taking those points and expressing them in our own words and so this right here incorporates the main points that the audience needs to know drafting a thesis statement the thesis statement expresses the main idea of a composition it should encompass every idea detail and argument in that one thesis statement it should all relate in some way to the thesis so your thesis isn't going to list out all of your arguments and details that you're going to have in your composition but it should relate in some way to all of them I think this can be kind of tricky because you want it to be general enough to encompass everything that's going to be in your paper but specific enough that the reader knows what your main idea is it should be a short declarative statement but it should not be vague it needs to be specific it can't just be a general subjective sentence that doesn't really tell the reader what's going on the thesis statement should suggest the content of the rest of the piece so the audience knows what to expect and if you're too vague the audience is it going to know what to expect so you have to be tous you have to be specific without being too specific in general without being too general so I'll give you a few examples so you can see how to balance these things and draft an effective thesis statement the principle is basically a nice guy it tells you the principles nice but there are lots of things you could talk about that would make the principle a nice guy this is a pretty vague statement so let's improve upon that let's get more specific and give the reader more of an idea of what the content of your piece is going to be the principles policies demonstrate his care for students so now the reason we think he's a nice guy is because it's obvious that he cares for his students based on his policies so we're not talking about the principle being a nice guy because he coaches Little League or he just said hi to you in the hallway it's because he has policies at school that show that he cares about his students so this is an effective thesis statement this is a good one this one is too vague we had to get more specific so let's look at another example dogs are good pets well not everyone's going to think that but at least if you give them more information they may see your side of things saying dogs are good pets is still really they you need to get more specific why do you think they're good pets but don't get too specific because you want your main idea to be in your thesis statement but you don't want all the supporting details to be there you want to save those for the body of your paper so let's look at this as if this is an effective thesis statement example changing dogs are good pets which is still too big to something more effective because of its sense of loyalty its ability to be trained and it's good companionship a dog is the perfect pet for me now this thesis does actually tell you what your main subtopics are probably going to be you'll probably have a body paragraph talking about a dog sense of loyalty another one about how easy they are to train and another one about how they are good companions this kind of thesis statement is also okay because it gets specific but not too specific it tells what your subtopics are going to be what your supporting overall ideas are going to be but it doesn't get into every detail and argument that you're going to present in your composition so this would be another good example so one of the main things to remember when writing your thesis statement is to include the main idea of your paper let the reader understand what they're going to it what they should expect from the rest of your paper but don't be too vague or too specific try to focus on a short declarative statement that tells the overall idea of your paper without giving it all away drafting body paragraphs body paragraph should follow the thesis statement of a composition and this is both in the order they are written and that all the body paragraphs are going to have to are going to support the thesis statement you want to supply supporting ideas details and arguments in your body paragraphs and many writers choose to start with the body paragraphs and this is because they know what they want to write about or they at least have some ideas but maybe they don't have their thesis in mind yet they haven't refined a thesis statement yet so many writers will write out all of the body paragraphs first they'll get their ideas down on paper and develop a thesis statement from that which works out perfectly because your body paragraphs are supposed to follow and support the thesis and the thesis statement is supposed to encompass all of your body paragraphs each paragraph of a that is a body paragraph should express a single supporting idea you shouldn't have multiple supporting ideas in one paragraph pick a main supporting idea and then give more details about that one back up that one single supporting idea within that body paragraph usually and you will find the supporting idea at the beginning of the paragraph the writer will let you know right away what they're supporting idea is that they're presenting in that body paragraph now sometimes the writer will save it for the end of the paragraph as a dramatic gesture or it might be in the second sentence that the first sentence was used as a transition between body paragraphs but usually you'll find your single supporting idea spelled out for you in the beginning of a paragraph however all sentences in the body paragraph should support both the main idea of that paragraph and the thesis statement of the essay as a whole so whenever you're writing your body paragraphs every sentence should still be supporting that main idea that single supporting idea of the paragraph and it should be backing up your thesis statement now your thesis statement was supposed to be broad enough to encompass everything that you're going to write about so your body paragraphs should be able to support your thesis statement without specifically restating it and each body paragraph should not repeat the thesis statement you don't want to repeat your thesis statement over and over throughout your paper what you want to do is state your thesis statement in the introductory paragraph all your body paragraphs should be supporting that thesis with details and then in their conclusion you don't want to repeat the thesis statement but you want to echo it you want to give your readers a final reminder of what it was that you were writing about what your main idea was so the thesis should simply be developed expanded and refined in the body paragraphs the body paragraphs are simply there to be that they're the body of the essay they're the meat of it that's where you're getting all your details from the thesis tells you what you're going to be writing about the body paragraph is where you're actually writing it you're giving all those details so most of your information is going to be found in your body paragraphs so just remember when you're drafting body paragraphs get your supporting ideas in there but stick to one single supporting idea per paragraph and make sure that every supporting idea is supporting that main thesis statement drafting conclusions many writers found the conclusion the most difficult part of the essay to compose because they there's expectation that it has to be profound or inspiring something magical but it doesn't have to be all that it should avoid simply restating the thesis statement you don't want to hear the same sentence again that you heard in your introductory paragraph but it should suggest some ideas or questions that were raised by the preceding text maybe your conclusion brings up a different idea that could be elaborated on for a future essay or a question it really makes the reader think about what they've just read a good conclusion will remind the reader of the thesis remind them of the thesis without restating it by providing some applications questions or possible counter arguments so the writer may tell you how you can use this information in the future what application does it have for your life they could pose an interesting question that makes you really think about what you just read or a counter-argument perhaps they say well maybe I'm not really right after all maybe it's this way and then that really throws you for a loop because you've just read their whole paper that supports their thesis and now they're saying well maybe not so that would really leave a lasting impression on you I think because you've just read this whole paper about one topic and they're telling you Oh but maybe it's this way which leaves you open to questioning it thinking about it and maybe you want to go do some research yourself after that a good conclusion should indicate how the reader should think about this subject in the future so maybe it doesn't change your mind about a particular issue completely but whenever this issue comes up later this essay should come to mind you should think about oh now I remember I read that one thing that sa and it really struck home with me and I remember that now or well I didn't know about this before but after reading this essay I know about this one thing and it affects the way I feel about the issue the conclusion should be memorable so we talked at home it doesn't have to be super inspiring but it should be memorable because it's the final impression that your reader is left with it's the last thing they're going to read before they're done reading your composition so you want it to be memorable so here are three different ways that you might do that without making it some on spiring work mini writers save a fascinating detail and anecdote or short story or a quote for the end of their paper so your conclusion could have some fascinating detail maybe you saved one thing that you found in your research that you thought was really cool and it supports your thesis statement really well and you saved it for the conclusion because you want your reader to remember that detail or maybe you found a little story or thought up a little story that which supports your thesis and you include that or maybe there's a famous quote out there hearing or reading a famous name makes you think oh they said something that supports their thesis ooh let me let me read that and remember that let me think about that again so these are three tricks that you can put in your bag for helping you compose a successful conclusion one that will be memorable and leave a final impression on your reader when you're drafting conclusions don't stress about making it this magical inspirational thing you might succeed you might get a magical inspirational conclusion but not all of them are going to be that flowery they're not all going to work out that way they may just support your thesis statement without restating it and let the reader know how they should think about this subject in the future you want to leave a lasting impression and three ways to do that would be with a fascinating detail an anecdote or a quote so I definitely remember these three tricks to keep in your bag the five-part essay is an effective way to convey an argument to the reader or persuade the reader to take a certain action there's two main ways to do a five-part essay so let's take a look at those ways first way you're going to start out with an introduction in the introduction you're going to have your thesis statement which is basically explaining what your essay is going to be about the rest that essay is going to further explain that thesis statement then the second section is the narration in the narration 'el you're going to give the reader some background information some additional information to help them understand your thesis statement better then you have the affirmation and the affirmation you're going to give facts data and details that that are in support of your thesis statement so anything that supports your thesis statement you're going to put in the affirmation then you have the negation this is where you put forth arguments that are against your thesis statement and when you present an argument against your thesis state statement you can do one of two things one you can offer a rebuttal that takes away the credibility of the argument or you can just concede and say I understand this argument is a very good one and it may very well be true then you're going to have the conclusion this is basically a lot like the introduction you're going to have the thesis statement again may be worded a little bit differently and you're going to tell the reader what you told them you're going to kind of wrap it up now the second way to do this is again you're going to start that introduction have the thesis statement in the introduction now in this way of doing the five part essay is instead of having the three different type of body paragraphs or body sections this is the body here you're going to have basically a three-part thesis statement the thesis statement is going to have three main facets to it so in each paragraph you're going to explain a different facet of the thesis statement so if the thesis statement lists three main arguments in this paragraph you're going to talk about the first argument this paragraph you're going to talk about the second argument and in this paragraph you're going to talk about the third argument then the conclusion basically sums up the points and restate the thesis but restates it may be a little bit differently not word for word now this difference differs from a five paragraph essay in that in a five paragraph essay it's just what it sounds like five paragraphs the introductions one paragraph the body paragraphs take up three paragraphs and the conclusion is one paragraph so the whole essay is five paragraphs where in this case in the five-part essay each of these points merely indicates a section of the essay so the introduction could be several paragraphs depending on how much information you have or the affirmation if you have a lot of good information supporting your thesis you could put several paragraphs for your affirmation and finally a good way to remember how to set up five-part essay is first you're going to tell them what you're going to tell them that's the introduction then you're going to tell them and that would be in the three middle sections and then finally for the conclusion you're going to tell them what you told after determining your own opinion and evaluating the credibility of your supporting text it is sometimes necessary to communicate your ideas and findings to others so that's when writing a response to a text comes in and the purpose of writing a response to the text is to communicate your ideas and findings to others so I want to look at some of the supporting evidence that you can use when writing a response to the text it's important that when you're writing this response that you don't just put in your own opinions but you also put in facts from the text so some of the things you can put in there are facts details statistics and direct quotations so what you want to do is look in the text and find things like this that you think will back up your arguments because you're communicating your ideas and findings to other people so you want to find the best way to communicate those ideas and findings so look for facts details statistics and direct quotations to back up your ideas and findings so what you need to do is take info from the original text which is all this up here take that info first and then base all of your discussion arguments and defense off of this information from the text notice the difference here when not using supporting evidence so consider like we're not even using all this then you're discussing your idea so you're discussing your findings you're arguing your findings you're offering a defense for your findings and ideas well why should the reader trust you that's where it's important to have the supporting evidence when writing a response to the text there are two primary uses for the semicolon in the English language the first is to separate two closely related independent clauses within a sentence if you use a semicolon there's no need to include a coordinating conjunction such as an the second used four semicolon is two separate items in a list when the items are long and complicated or contain internal punctuation such as a comma ordinarily you would use a comma to separate items in the list but if the items contain commas within them it may be confusing to separate the items with a comma so that's for the semicolon comes in here we have one example sentence for each usage in this first one we have two independent clauses separated by a semicolon so each of these each of these clauses could stand on its own as a sentence but we've chosen to combine them into a single sentence and we do so with a semicolon its properties a semicolon in this sentence because the two phrases I went to the doctor and he told me I had the flu are very closely related to one another hearing that you have the flu is a direct result of going to the doctor you would not for instance be able to use a semicolon in a situation where your two clauses were I went to the doctor I scored a 99 on my exam because they're not related in the same way that these are so in order to use a semicolon to separate two independent clauses the two clauses must be very closely related to one another the second example was items in the list so as you can see here we've got three items and they are city state combinations so you'll recall the proper way to list out cities and states is City comma state so each item has an internal comma so it could be confusing to try to separate them with commas so the proper usage in this instance is to use a semicolon to separate each of them so these are the two primary uses for semi one's in English parentheses are punctual marks that serve two main purposes to set aside material that is not necessary and indicate that a word can be singular or plural let's take a look at the first use in this sentence it says last week a tornado came through our town which is not common destroying many homes now which is not common which is in parentheses is not necessary to the meaning of the sentence in fact we could just take this phrase right out and it even wouldn't even change the meaning of the sentence take a look at what I mean last week a tornado came through our town destroying many homes even when you take this phrase out it doesn't make any difference to the sentence parentheses just show that these words have additional information if you as a writer want to write something down you want to add a little tidbit to what you're saying to give the reader even more information you can put the information in parenthesis but that lets the reader know that that information is not central to the message you're trying to convey and make sure that anytime words are put in parenthesis make sure that you can read that sentence without the words and the parentheses even there make sure that it still makes sense so always practice reading your sentence so say I wrote the sentence I would practice last week a tornado came through our town skip what's in the parenthesis and say destroying many homes that makes perfect sense so I know that I'm good another instance when you use parentheses is that you're doing some kind of more formal writing so say I wrote representative Nancy Pelosi I would put in parentheses that she's a Democrat from California that's additional information you don't have to know that but I wanted to add on that tidbit of information now the second main use for parentheses is to indicate that a word can be singular or plural the reader in this case does not know which applies more to the reader the singular form of the word or the plural form of the word so take a look at this pretend this is from a car wash the flyer and it says we will wash your car and then in parentheses has an S because the car wash doesn't know whether you have one car two cars or even more so they put s in parentheses in the reader then determines which applies more to them the plural form or the singular form so remember that parentheses have two main functions know what those functions are and remember that parentheses are always work in pairs you wouldn't just put one parentheses right there and leave the other one out you need to because they enclose information inside of them organization is very important in a paper because it helps the reader follow the writers train of thought so there's several types of organization and some of those I've written up here on the board the important thing is is that the writer picks a method of organization and sticks with it through the entire paper so the first method of organization is spatial organization so say I was describing a room I would describe everything on the floor then everything on one wall and moving clockwise describe each wall and then describe the ceiling oh and describe the couch and then a painting on one wall and then a picture on another wall and then discuss the recliner on the floor I would focus on one area of the room before moving on to the next area another way to organize a paper is through cause-and-effect you could talk about something that's going on and the effect of that or talk about several causes and several effects you can also compare and contrast if you're talking about two or more things talk about how these things are alike and how these things are different another way is through chronological order so you could talk about the series of events this is great if it's step by step instructions you wouldn't start with something and start talking about it and then say oh before you do this make sure you do this you would start at the very beginning while you were talking about a recipe you talk about this is the first ingredient then the second ingredient then the third ingredient so that can be very good or if you're talking about someone's life you would start when they were born and move all the way to where they are currently or until death if you're talking about a series of events it's best to get the background information first and work up to today so chronological order can be a great method of organization classification and division this is like talking about things that are very general and then getting more specific and then problem in solution you can talk about a problem and then the solution to that problem or some possible solutions to that problem so these are just some basic ways to organize a paper there are other methods out there and there's some that you can kind of come up with on your own you wouldn't have to find them you just naturally know this is the best way to organize my paper but the important thing is one way to organize your paper and stick with it don't jump around between the different methods of organization fragments and run-on sentences a fragment is an incomplete sentence or thought that cannot stand on its own and it can't stand on its own and it's incomplete because it's missing either a noun or a verb so let's look at some examples of fragments with a beautiful daisies in my yard now this is a lot of information the beautiful blooming daisies in my yard but you have your noun some adjectives to describe it an article adjectives and then you go to prepositional phrase that tells you where they are but you're missing something you're missing the verb so this one is a fragment so you can have a longer sentence or a longer fragment that looks like a sentence and still have it be a fragment because it's missing you through the noun or the verb so we had our known well we were missing our verb so even though it looks long it looks like it could be a sentence don't be fooled by the length of a fragment because just because a phrase is long doesn't mean it's a complete sentence let's look at another example waited all day at my house for you in this sentence we have an action waiting so we've got our verb all day out my house for you well you say some pronouns in there but there's no no there's no subject of this sentence so you're missing a subject noun and this one so it's still a fragment you've got the verb part you've got the predicate part of your sentence but you don't have the subject part so this is a fragment it is an auto complete sentence so when you're looking for fragments look for either missing verb or missing noun because if you're missing one of those then your fragment cannot stand on its own and will not be a complete sentence and you're writing you'll need to revise you can we need to revise these and often you can just add a little bit to a fragment to make it a complete sentence the beautiful blooming days is in my yard look so nice this time of year smell wonderful are going to win the contest you can finish the sentence in any way wait it all day at my house for you we could you could say we waited all day at my house for you I waited my mom and I waited there are a little it's a little bit more limited what you could put at the beginning of this sentence because we've got my and you for pronouns down here but you still have options and you could easily turn this fragment into a complete sentence now let's look at run-on sentences a run-on sentence is a sentence that should be written as two sentences it's too long it contains too much information it is confusing to the reader and if it's running on and on and on then it's likely there's not correct punctuation and there's too many nouns and too many verbs crammed into one sentence so you need to break it up so that you've got separate complete thoughts and it's easier for the reader to understand let's look at these examples run-on sentences and then correct them I couldn't believe it when I heard that there were going to be thunderstorms tomorrow I was planning on having a barbecue outside to celebrate summer this is a lot of information so we need to see where one thought is and another one starts so that we can split it up I couldn't believe it well we want to know what she couldn't believe I couldn't believe it when I heard that there were going to be thunderstorms tomorrow so all that is one thought so we're going to separate this and put a period and we would need to capitalize the next letter but since it was I it was automatically capitalized I was planning on having a barbecue outside to celebrate summer now we have two complete sentences they're separate it's not too much information in each sentence and it's not going to be confusing to the reader I couldn't believe it when I heard that there were going to be thunderstorms tomorrow I was planning on having a barbecue outside to celebrate summer so now it's not so confusing it doesn't just run on and on and on we didn't have so many subjects and so many verbs in one sentence now we've separated it out and made it easier for the reader to understand right away let's look at our next example John and Mary had so much fun they went to the fair and rode rides in it cotton candy now this one we need to find where we need to split it up we have another run-on sentence we've got a lot of actions but we need to see where we could split it up to keep the subject and verb of one sentence and the subject and verb of a second sentence and make it two complete sentences we don't want to split it up incorrectly and leave my fragment somewhere John and Mary let's look at what they did John and Mary had so much fun they when we get today that's a new pronoun that's a new subject so we should stop there John and Mary had so much fun and then if we're starting a new sentence we need to capitalize our T and they John and Mary had so much fun they went to the fair and row rides and ate cotton candy so now we have two complete thoughts first we're saying they had fun and then we're saying how they had fun and we didn't keep it a run-on sentence to where we had this pronoun in the middle of this sentence making it sound a little confusing we have John and Mary having fun and then they went to the fair and rode rides and ate cotton candy so we split it up into two sentences that are easier to understand and you also would want to revise any run-on sentences in your writing if you see a sentence that's going on and on for three or four lines you probably need to find somewhere in there to break it up so that it is in a run-on sentence you can have sentences that are more complex if you're using semicolons etc but you don't want it to be so long that there are too many ideas in one sentence so when you're writing make sure you don't have any incomplete thoughts that are missing a noun or verb we don't want any fragments in your writing and make sure that none of your sentences are going on so long and including too much information that it makes it a run-on sentence suffixes and root words have you ever been reading a book and come across the word that you've never seen before well if you can break that word down into prefixes suffixes and root words then you can probably figure out what the word means for instance orthography may be a word you've never seen before but if we break it down into its prefix ortho its root word graph and its suffix y then we might be able to figure out what the word means ortho means correct or straight graph means write or draw and y means the state or condition of so if we put all those together we can get the state of being written correctly and when we compare the definition we came up with with our actual definition you can see they're pretty close the state of being written correctly writing words using the proper letters so you got a pretty good idea just by breaking the words down into a prefix of root word and a suffix and figuring out what those met and even if you only knew graph had something to do with writing you would have an idea that orthography had to do something with writing let's look at another example geometric will break down into our prefix geo our root word Metra in our suffix pick geo means earth and we put that with Metro which means measure and it means having to do with so if we put all of those together we can come up with having two to do with measuring the earth now this one isn't quite as close to the actual definition relating to the branch of mathematics that has to do with measuring points lines and angles but it does have measuring in there you would be able to tell from the root word measure the geometric is going to have something to do with measuring so if you ever come across a word that you don't know first try to figure out what the prefix is the root word is and the suffix is so that you can maybe get an idea of what the word means you can see how important prefixes suffixes and root words are to understanding what a word means adjectives can take on different forms when they're being used to compare two or more things let's take a look at this example on the board we have the word fast that is an adjective and its most basic form so if we were going to compare two things to each other we would use the adjective faster so an example of this adjectives right here fast would be saying look at that fast person now if we were comparing two people Jim and Steve we would say Jim is faster than Steve you wouldn't say Jim is fast and Steve you would say Jim is faster than Steve because you're comparing two people so we're going to call this form of the adjective the comparative form and you can do this with more than with other adjectives besides fast you could use tall and then taller or pretty and then prettier so we call this the comparative form and the comparative form is generally found by adding er to the adjective so this is fast right here in its basic form then we add er to it to make it faster and it's income it's it's in its comparative form to compare two people or two objects you could say that car is faster than the other one now let's look at the word fastest we changed fast and two fastest by adding est this is the superlative form of fast the superlative form is used when you're comparing three or more objects or people so you could say Jim is the fastest runner on his track team because there's many athletes on this track team and he's the fastest or you could say this is the fastest car that this dealership sells it's used when you're comparing three or more things so remember that's called the superlative form now let's take a look at this played out in some sentences so this first and it says she is a kind person kind is the adjective here because it's describing person now if we want to look at the comparative form of kind we would add er to it to get kinder so when we're comparing her to her sister we would use kinder she is kinder than her sister or she is a kinder person than her sister then this last sentence we would say she is the kindest person in her family because there's three or more people in her family and she's the most kind and all of her family so we would say kindness because it's comparing three or more people now like I said to get the comparative form you add er to the adjective and to get the superlative form you add est now sometimes adjectives are not always that easy there's some words which we call irregular pronouns take the word good for example like he is a good piano player now if you say that he is gooder than he used to be in other words he's improved you wouldn't say he is gooder than he used to be that doesn't make sense the next word would be better he is better than it used to be or he is a better piano player than John now if you wanted to say he is the bestest player he's ever been that doesn't make sense either you would say he is the best player that he has ever been or he is the best player out of all of his brothers so you see here that even in this comparative format superlative form even this is cut even though this is kind of irregular er still exists in a comparative form like it does with the word pasture and est still exists in the superlative form like it did in fastest now let's look at one more kind of funny word we have the adjective happy now if we want to change this to the comparative form we can't leave the Y we have to change the Y to an i so if we write it like that it does make sense happier and then the superlative form would be happiest because if you left this I write here is a why that wouldn't be grammatically correct it needs to have an I write here instead of a y so the important thing to take from this session is that you have an adjective in its regular form which then can be changed to the comparative form while comparing it between itself and one other thing like when you're comparing two people or two objects you use the comparative form and when you're comparing three or more people or objects so if you're comparing three people to see who is the fastest then you use the superlative form or if you're comparing 25 people to see who is the fastest you still use the superlative form subordinating conjunctions our words or group of words that make one part of the sentence dependent on the rest of the sentence take a look at what I mean this tenet says the organization will exist as long as there is ample funding as long as is the subordinating conjunction in this sentence now the organization will exist could be a sentence by itself we put a period right there and there is ample funding could also be a sentence by itself those two sentences could stand alone but when we add to this first sentence the organization will exist as long as it makes the rest of the sentence and makes that sentence dependent on something else because if we were just to say the organization will exist as long as that leaves us hanging that's a fragment and needs some other words to go along with it to make it a complete sentence so the organization will exist as long as there is ample funding so as long as it's the subordinating conjunction making the first part of the sentence dependent on something else to complete the sentence let's look at one more example since it is noon let's eat lunch since right here is the subordinating conjunction remember I said a subordinating conjunction can be one word or a group of words so up here it was three words sometimes the subordinating conjunction is two words and then often it is just one word like sense so here it says since it is noon let's eat lunch now again let's eat lunch could be a sentence by itself and it is noon could be a sentence by itself but when we add sense to it is new it makes this part of the sentence dependent on some other words to complete the sentence because if we just said since it is noon that wouldn't make any sense that would be a fragment because it's incomplete so a subordinating conjunction makes the rest of the sentence dependent on something else to complete it that way since it is noon let's eat lunch makes sense what is a predicate well a predicate along with the subject of a sentence makes us in its hole the subject of a sentence tells who is going to do the action of the sentence and then the predicate tells what that action is going to be take a look at this first sentence the friends hiked frequently the subject of this sentence is friends so what is the verb of this sentence well since the subject tells us who is going to do the action and the predicate tells us what that action is going to be then it only makes sense that the verb here needs to be what the friends will be doing well the friends here will be hiking so hike is the verb I'm going to put two lines under it to show that it's the verb so here Friends is the subject so Friends is going to be the people doing the action in this sentence and then the predicate tells what that action is going to be this next ten it says the friends have been hiking here again friends is the subject so what is the verb here well you look at hiking right here you know that's a verb well have and bin are also verbs as well haven't been or what we call helping verbs because they're helping hiking right here so friends says or the subject here tell us that friends is going to be doing the action of this sentence and the predicate tells what that action is going to be all right this third sentence says the friends hike and camp friends again is the subject so friends are going to be the people doing the action in this sentence well what's the predicate here well you know hike is a verb but camp is also a verb so here you have two verbs because the friends are going to be doing more than one thing so remember when looking at a predicate just remember that a predicate is what completes the sentence the subject tells who or what is going to be doing the action and the predicate tells what that action is a preposition is basically a word that can't stand alone because it wouldn't make sense by itself some examples of a preposition would be in under or around you notice these words can't stand by themselves because they don't make sense by themselves there's not enough information there so that's where the prepositional phrase comes into play a prepositional phrase might look like in the tree or around the corner so right here and would be a preposition and tree is what we call the object of the preposition because right here if we just have the preposition in we're wondering in what it's in the tree or around the corner around is a preposition and Corner is the object of the preposition we don't know what's around it's around the corner so prepositional phrases just come in sentences oftentimes at the end of a sentence so we could say the squirrel is in the tree here again and is the preposition tree is the object of the preposition and squirrel is the subject of the sentence so if we just have the preposition this kind of leaves us hanging we're wandering the squirrel is in what so tree is the object of the preposition because it tells where the squirrel or what the squirrel is in so there's lots of prepositions out there way many way too many for me to name right now but I'm going to teach you a trick to help you remember prepositions all right there's a tree I drew that's about the best I can do but think about a tree in a squirrel okay think about all the things this world can do when near a tree and that will help you remember prepositions because a squirrel could be under a tree when under is a preposition it could be in the tree or around a tree or upon a tree or behind a tree beside a tree next to a tree beneath a tree over a tree toward a tree past a tree or by a tree so all those words I listed by pass toward those are all prepositions and so by remembering a squirrel and its relationship to a tree it may seem kind of silly but that can help you remember many of the prepositions you

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Id: 3uKWmWKsMpY

Length: 58min 55sec (3535 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2015