Students may work in self-selected groups. Ask students to read the sentence fragments and their rewritten counterparts and then to determine how the fragments are functioning in the writing. Explain that these examples were taken from The Best American Essays and were written by professionals. Hand out the Sentence Fragment Pairs sheet.Do you think writers feel reluctant to do so? Do you think writers may feel as though their work will be looked down on? Or might writers feel rebellious in using sentence fragments? Discuss with students how writers might feel about intentionally using sentence fragments.Students may suggest that teachers want their students to be technically correct in grammar usage, they don’t want students to appear ignorant in language usage, or that it’s just plain wrong to have sentence fragments in writing.

Ask students why teachers might generally advise students to avoid sentence fragments. You might do a minilesson on finding and fixing sentence fragments.

Review with students what sentence fragments are using the Purdue Owl site, Capital Community College Guide to Grammar and Writing, My English, or your own grammar handbook.

Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information). Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.ġ2. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.ġ1. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.ĩ. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.ħ. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.Ħ.

Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.ĥ. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).Ĥ.

Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.ģ. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world to acquire new information to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace and for personal fulfillment.

Sentence fragment english meaning