* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Download SPaG Booster - cloudfront.net
Compound (linguistics) wikipedia , lookup
Arabic grammar wikipedia , lookup
Japanese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Morphology (linguistics) wikipedia , lookup
Modern Hebrew grammar wikipedia , lookup
Kannada grammar wikipedia , lookup
Lithuanian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Untranslatability wikipedia , lookup
Serbo-Croatian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Swedish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Macedonian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Sloppy identity wikipedia , lookup
Scottish Gaelic grammar wikipedia , lookup
Yiddish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Preposition and postposition wikipedia , lookup
Turkish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Contraction (grammar) wikipedia , lookup
Relative clause wikipedia , lookup
French grammar wikipedia , lookup
Chinese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Latin syntax wikipedia , lookup
Determiner phrase wikipedia , lookup
Polish grammar wikipedia , lookup
English clause syntax wikipedia , lookup
Spanish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Pipil grammar wikipedia , lookup
Esperanto grammar wikipedia , lookup
SPaG Booster A few important things to remember from our SPaG sessions Mrs Carey Easter 2016 This booklet includes some of the important things we practised during our SPaG booster sessions. I hope you find it useful SPELLING STRATEGIES: How many syllables are in the word? Are there any words hidden inside the word that you recognise or already know? Has the word got a prefix, or a suffix? These are quite easy to spell. Do you know a word already which rhymes with this one? Listen to the word – occasionally the word will tell you the names of some of the letters! Sort your word lists into groups. Not everyone learns spelling the same way – you can sort lists into words that; mean the same are the same length are the same number of syllables belong to a word family sound the same have the same letter patterns All your test words will be read out in sentences. This will help you as it will give you the meaning of the word. Homophones sound the same but are spelt differently: past and passed. Passed has the –ed suffix on it, so you know this is a verb not a preposition – past is the preposition – this knowledge will help you to sort out the correct spelling. You can use DBPrimary to practise all the word lists you should have learned since you started school! You never know which words you will be asked to spell in your SATs test! Look carefully at the activities which have homophones, suffixes or prefixes in them. Remember to do the activities more than once so that you use all the words in the activity. BBCBitesize also has activities to practise spelling, grammar and punctuation. Can you remember what kinds of words these are? Check the notes you made in your book Remember, there are adverbs of time, pace, manner, quantity and possibility! Relative Pronouns that which who whom whose where when A relative clause is always introduced by a relative pronoun and refers to the preceding noun – this is useful to know when you are identifying relative clauses. ‘That’ can also be a determiner or a conjunction: where and when can also be adverbs – check your sentence carefully to see what function the word has before you decide which word class it belongs to! The other important pronoun is a possessive pronoun. My, your, her, his, its, our and their – these words can also act as determiners. Determiners the a/ an this that these those my you his / her / its our their some any no many much few little both all either neither each every enough three fifty - nine thousand any number which what whose Determiners are always in front of a noun or in front of the adjective modifying a noun. Conjunctions For And Nor But Or Yet So - these are the co-ordinating conjunctions and are used to link to clauses of equal weight or value. The other type of conjunction is a subordinating conjunction. Some prepositions and adverbs can also function as conjunctions. If there is a conjunction in a sentence, then it must link two clauses. If the sentence is a single clause sentence, the word cannot be a conjunction! I went to bed before nine o’clock. – before is a preposition Before he went to the shop, Arvin locked the front door. In this sentence before is a conjunction! Verbs have to agree with the subject in a sentence – singular or plural – make sure you have the right inflection (ending) on a verb or that you have chosen the correct form of an irregular verb. Verbs also have to be in the correct tense for the purpose of your writing: a recount is always written in the past as it is reporting things which have already happened. You also have to be aware of the tense you are using and whether it is the most appropriate tense to use. The infinitive form of the verb is the root - play, run, cook, try etc. The infinitive often has the word to in front of it: to play, to run, to cook etc. We have looked at several different tenses – now see if you can remember them. . . . I eat my breakfast . I am eating my breakfast. I will eat my breakfast. I have eaten my breakfast and now I am going to school. I had eaten my breakfast when the phone rang. I finished eating my breakfast and then the phone rang. I was eating my breakfast when the phone rang. - The phone rang while I was still eating my breakfast. The subjunctive is rarely used these days – If I were the best footballer in the world, I would. . . It is used when speaking about something which is highly unlikely to happen! The past subjunctive may be used: - after if or I wish to express regret or longing. If I were rich I would buy a Ferrari. I wish I were as fast as Usain Bolt. - after as if or as though to express doubt or improbability. You talk to him as if he were useless. Some people behave as though dogs were human. The active voice is the normal way of writing a sentence – the subject actions the verb – The cat sat on the mat. Occasionally we want to emphasise what has happened in the sentence rather than who did it. We can change the sentence round like this – The mat was sat on by the cat – this is called the passive voice. Phrases and Clauses The difference between a phrase and a clause is that phrases don’t usually contain a verb and a clause does. Noun phrase = the woman, a cat, tiny seed, big dog Adjectival phrase = a group of words where the adjective is the key word – very good, really excited – an adjectival phrase takes the place of one adjective. Adverbial phrase = as quickly as possible, as fast as lightening, very slowly Prepositional phrase – into the cupboard, across the floor, down the road. An expanded noun phrase does contain a verb: this phrase adds extra information to a noun phrase. The old lady, who lived next door, was my friend. The whole underlined section is an expanded noun phrase. It could also be a noun phrase with a relative clause – if a question asked for an expanded noun phrase – then this answer would be correct; it would also be correct if the question asked for a relative clause and you underlined ‘who lived next door.’ There are different types of clause: a main clause. The main clause could be a sentence by itself – a single clause sentence. The teacher is my class teacher. A subordinate clause and a relative clause have to be attached to a main clause. That teacher, standing over there, is my class teacher. – ‘standing over there’ is a subordinate clause. The teacher who stood over there is my class teacher. – ‘who stood over there’ is a relative clause. Neither the relative nor the subordinate clayse could be a sentence on its own. They are both part of a multi- clause sentence. A reporting clause is used every time we record direct or indirect speech. Mary said; Stephen whispered; Jasmina shouted could all be examples of a reporting clause. Remember- speech has to be treated as a sentence inside the speech marks/ inverted commas. Speech must start with a capital letter and the end punctuation must be inside the closing speech mark. If the reporting clause comes after the speech, and the speech would have finished with a full stop, put a comma inside the speech marks and a full stop after the reporting clause. “We have finished our grammar for this week,” said Mrs Carey. Formal or Standard English does not have contractions, uses high level vocabulary, and is almost posh! Any numbers will be written in words not digits, and there will be no shortcuts or abbreviations. REMEMBER – words, phrases and clauses can take on different roles depending on their function in a sentence. We know that the word that is a relative pronoun or a determiner; it’s easily identifiable as a determiner as determiners are always in front of the noun. Relative clauses always start with a relative pronoun, so that’s quite easy too. But in this sentence - He said that he couldn’t go home, that functions as a conjunction! Become a grammar detective! Read the sentence carefully and then read your question again, before coming to a decision about your answer! Punctuation We all know when to use capital letters and full stops; the trick is remembering to use them! Sentences must make sense and must be about a consistent topic. Conjunctions and subordinate clauses can extend and expand our sentences, but don’t make them so long that it’s difficult to remember what the sentence is about! A trick is to make sure that your sentence has one subject – all clauses should refer back to this subject. Full stops can be replaced with exclamation and question marks – these also mark the end of a sentence. Other punctuation is found inside a sentence. Commas – these mark pauses, lists, clauses and occasionally parenthesis. Some people also refer to inverted commas simply as commas but the term inverted commas helps us remember that these are found at the top of letters and not at the bottom. In England, we do not use commas before a conjunction, nor after the penultimate item in a list, unless you need to avoid ambiguity – the comma is used to group the words correctly. Inverted commas are used to show possession, speech, quotes and contractions. When you use inverted commas to show direct speech, your speech should be punctuated within the inverted commas as independent sentences. The only exception to this rule comes when your speech precedes the reporting clause and would normally finish with a full stop. In this case we punctuate the direct speech with a comma and put the full stop at the end of the reporting clause. Semi – colons are used in between two main clauses and to separate longer items in a list Colons are used to introduce a list and to introduce explanations or examples Dashes can be used to punctuate parenthesis – these can be used instead of commas or brackets for this purpose. Ellipsis is used when we want to add suspense or build in a pause at the end of a sentence. Ellipsis is marked with three full stops. . .