17th class
meeting, Spring 2005
Class Activities: Chris began by reviewing the simple sentence (having them build on a simple subject and verb), compound subjects, and compound verbs. Then he moved into more complex sentences (identifying subjects in sentences with inverted word order—questions, Here & There sentences, and simple inverted-order sentences). Then he discussed finding the subject and verb in sentences in which the subject was separated from the verb by a prepositional phrase.
The review of this rather technical material was important for the students, I believe (after a weekend, and to reinforce information that doesn’t usually “stick” naturally).
Chris covered some trickier sentences in picking out verbs by inserting adverbs in “verb strings” (e.g. “Our number was finally called”).
By inserting increasingly longer (or more) prepositional phrases between the subject and verb, thus raising the ante little by little, he brought the students along gradually to finding subjects in harder-to-find sentences.
Covering the same material on his slides with new sentences and having some sentences that were harder both reinforced this information and raised the difficulty level.