Week 1 - Good Grammar and Sentences

Question 1

What is the difference between active and passive voice in a sentence?

Answer 1

When you want to emphasize the object of the action in a sentence, use the passive. When you want to emphasize the agent, or the person or thing performing an action, use an active sentence.

An actor doing something to the objective (Active).
We have an object and something is being done to it (Passive).

Question 2

Which one of these is active or passive?
1. What happened to the ball? The ball was kicked by Leila.
2. What did Leila do? Leila kicked the ball.

Answer 2

1. Passive
2. Active

Question 3

What is the difference between Gerund and Infinitive? Give examples regarding ““reading”””.

Answer 3

A gerund is a noun made from a verb by adding “-ing.” Infinitives are the “to” form of the verb (although sometimes ‘to’ isn’t used.) Here are some examples:

I enjoy reading. (gerund)
I want to read. (infinitive)
“Enjoy” requires a gerund: He enjoys swimming, eating, and sleeping. “Want” requires an infinitive: She wants to work, play, and watch movies. Some verbs require only a gerund; others take only an infinitive. There are some that can use both.

Question 4

What is an adjective? give example.

Answer 4

Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or states of being of nouns: enormous, doglike, silly, yellow, fun, fast. They can also describe the quantity of nouns: many, few, millions, eleven.

Question 5

What is a verb? give example.

Answer 5

A verb is a word that indicates a physical action (e.g., “drive”), a mental action (e.g., “think”) or a state of being (e.g., “exist”). Every sentence contains a verb. Verbs are almost always used along with a noun or pronoun to describe what the noun or pronoun is doing.

Question 6

What is a noun and pronoun? Give example.

Answer 6

Nouns make up the largest class of words in most languages, including English. A noun is a word that refers to a thing (book), a person (Noah Webster), an animal (cat), a place (Omaha), a quality (softness), an idea (justice), or an action (yodeling).

A pronoun is a word that you use to refer to someone or something when you do not need to use a noun, often because the person or thing has been mentioned earlier. Examples are ‘it’, ‘she’, ‘something’, and ‘myself’.

Question 7

What is a adverb? Give example.

Answer 7

An adverb is a word that modifies (describes) a verb (he sings loudly), an adjective (very tall), another adverb (ended too quickly), or even a whole sentence (Fortunately, I had brought an umbrella). Adverbs often end in –ly, but some (such as fast) look exactly the same as their adjective counterparts.

Question 8

What is a conjunction? Give example. FANBOYS?

Answer 8

Conjunctions are words that link other words, phrases, or clauses together.

English has seven coordinating conjunctions—for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so—which you can remember using the mnemonic FANBOYS

Question 9

What is a preposition? Give example.

Answer 9

A preposition is a word or group of words used before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, time, place, location, spatial relationships, or to introduce an object. Some examples of prepositions are words like “in,” “at,” “on,” “of,” and “to.”

Question 10

What is an article? Give example.

Answer 10

An article is a word that is used to indicate that a noun is a noun without describing it. For example, in the sentence Nick bought a dog, the article a indicates that the word dog is a noun. Articles can also modify anything that acts as a noun, such as a pronoun or a noun phrase

Question 11

What is the difference between parts of the sentence, and parts of speech?

Answer 11

The parts of the sentence refers to the terminology for different pieces of sentences. The parts of sentences are not the same as parts of speech. For example, one sentence part is the subject. The subject of a sentence could be a noun, a pronoun, or even another sentence.

Question 12

What are the two key parts to a sentence?

Answer 12

The two key parts to a sentence are the subject and predicate. The subject is what (or whom) the sentence is about, and the predicate says something about the subject.

Question 13

what is the difference between a phrase and a clause?

Answer 13

A clause is a group of words that has a subject that is doing something. If the clause can stand by itself, and form a complete sentence, it is an independent clause.

Dependent clauses have a subject that does something, but they have a subordinate conjunction at the beginning of the clause. That subordinate conjunction means that the clause can’t stand by itself as a complete sentence. In other words, the dependent clause is dependent upon another clause–it can’t make a complete sentence by itself.

Phrases
leaving the grocery store
walking into a building
before the first of the month
after class
between a rock and a hard place
broken in two
because of her bravery
Clauses
since he laughs at bad jokes [dependent; begins with subordinate conjunction ‘since’]
I like generous people [independent]
His mother is a successful writer [independent]
because she finished her assignment [dependent; begins with subordinate conjunction ‘because’]
when the bills are due [dependent; begins with subordinate conjunction ‘when’]

Question 14

What makes a sentence and what is a fragment sentence? relate to phrases and clauses*

Answer 14

A fragment sentence is a misuse of phrase or a clause.

"”My umbrella” that is a phrase. ““running really fast”” is also a phase. However, a sentence requires both a subject and a verb, a phrase cannot be a complete sentence.

Sentence can be constructed by both a phrase and a clause or a independent clause on its own.

Question 15

What makes an effective sentence? Give seven key ingredients.

Answer 15

1. clarity: a sentence should be clear to the reader
2. well-chosen vocabulary: choose words whose meaning you are sure of, and use them correctly
3. strong verbs: when possible, use verbs that show the action of the sentence. The verb ‘be’ (in all its forms – is, are, was, were, etc.) is a weaker choice of verb in many cases. Try to find a verb that shows the action.
4. proper length: if your sentence expresses a simple idea, it probably needs to be a short sentence. More complex ideas may need longer sentences. Vary your sentence lengths as well. If all your sentences are short, your writing sounds “choppy.” If all your sentences are long, your writing can be overly complicated and hard to understand.
5. limited number of clauses and prepositions: the more clauses and prepositions you have in a sentence, the harder it can be to understand. Think about how many clauses you have included in a single sentence.
6. subject-verb agreement: be sure you can identify the subject of your sentence, then make sure the verb agrees with it in number. For example:
   The cup is full of coffee.
   The cups are full of coffee.
7. correct verb tense: if you are speaking of things in the past, use past tense verbs. This may seem obvious, but if your native language does not make this distinction with verbs, this can be a difficult aspect of English.

Question 16

What are the six steps to more concise writing?

Answer 16

1. Avoid redundancy. Look at this list–the words in parentheses aren’t necessary. They say the same thing as the main phrase.

ten p.m. (at night)
tall (in height)
our (final) conclusion

2. Watch out for wordy phrases. Wordiness happens when you use more words than you need to say something. For example, “in view of the fact that” means simply, “because.” “despite the fact that’’ can just be ‘‘although”.
3. Make your subject clear and defined.

Unclear: The practice of revision would improve our writing.
Clear: Revision would improve our writing.
Avoid empty subjects it and there (called expletives) when possible.

Empty: There is no way to become a better writer than to practice.
Defined: We can become better writers if we practice

4. Use strong verbs. Avoid using sentences that rely overly on some form of the word ‘to be’ in combination with nouns or prepositions.

to be + nouns: What we found was a solution to the problem.
Strong verb: We solved the problem.

5. Avoid vague words. Words like “thing,” “stuff,” “material,” “people,” “get,” or “did” should be replaced with precise nouns or verbs.

Vague: I needed to get some stuff at the store.

Clear: I needed to buy some groceries at the farmer’s market.

6. Remove unnecessary modifiers. Too many modifiers weaken the force of your writing; they bury your main ideas in a mountain of words that don’t mean much. Look for modifiers like “many,” “really,” “quite,” “in my opinion,” and so on, and edit them out of your writing.

Unnecessary: In my opinion, that movie was really quite good. I’m very glad we saw it.

Concise: That movie was fantastic! I’m glad we saw it.

If the revision of that sentence sounds too simple, think of other ways to modify it that add information. Adding words like “really” or “quite” do not add information. However, you could say, “That movie was an interesting retelling of a familiar story,” for example.