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Professor Pen says,
"A complete sentence must have two parts!"
A subject (HINT: A noun that the sentence is about)
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Professor Pen says,
"A complete sentence must have two parts!"
A subject (HINT: A noun that the sentence is about)
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Here is a simple sentence:
The boy ran.
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"The boy" is the subject. The sentence
is about "the boy".
"ran" is the predicate. What did
"the boy" do? The boy "ran".
When you start adding words to the sentence, they either connect themselves to the subject or to the predicate.
Example:
The boy ran slowly.
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"The boy" is the complete subject.
"ran slowly" is the complete predicate.
You can add prepositional phrases to the sentence, making it a complex sentence:
The boy ran slowly around the track.
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because "around the track" describes how he ran, it becomes part of the predicate.
You can add adjectives to describe the boy:
The lazy
boy ran slowly around the track.
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Because "lazy" describes the boy, it becomes part of the subject.
Compare our first sentence to our current sentence:
The boy ran. The lazy boy ran around the track.
These two sentences tell a completely
different story, don't they? The second sentence gives the reader a clearer
picture of what is happening, yet both contain a subject and a predicate.
| Having only a subject, but no
predicate:
That woman next door. This is only the subject. We need to know WHAT? What is she, or what is she doing, or what did she do???? These sentences would be complete sentences: That woman next door is pretty.
or even That woman lives next door.
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| Having only the predicate:
I did a lot of things this week. I did my homework. went shopping. Who went shopping? Well, we know you went shopping, but that's not what was written, was it? You can fix this a couple of ways: I did my homework and went shopping. I did my homework. I also went shopping.
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| Easy Activity Page - an activity to identify subject and predicate |
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