Everyone loves an epic grammar or syntax fail.
There’s this one that shows how a simple comma can be the difference between life and death:
“Let’s eat Grandpa.”
Or this one that’s been floating around the internet (which shows how important it is to know what is and isn’t a coordinating conjunction):
“Everyone’s got a right to be stupid butt you’re abusing that privilege.”
And then let’s not forget this one that shows what happens when your doctor doesn’t write complete sentences and use periods in their SOAP notes:
“Large brown stools ambulating in the hallway.”
But in all seriousness, syntax is not something you want to overlook with your students.
Mostly because you don’t want your students be the kind of people who can’t tell the difference between “butt” and “but.”
Yet like I shared in this article, a lot of SLPs are coming forward and admitting they aren’t 100% sure what syntax skills to teach their students…or HOW to teach them.
But if you’re one of them…you’re in luck.
Because today, we’re going to dive in to part 2 of the “syntax IQ” series; where you get to put your syntax skills to the test.
In part 1, I shared some videos that walked you through explaining sentences, phrases, and clauses to your students.
We started here because a lot of students can’t tell the difference between a phrase and a complete sentence.
Once we’ve learned how to explain the components of a sentence, we can move on to different types of sentences.
That’s what we’re going to cover today.
(Incidentally, it’s okay to move on to working on different sentence types even if your kids don’t identify or produce complete sentences 100% of the time…at this point its more important that YOU know how to explain the difference).
Complex sentences are a huge challenge for kids with language disorders, and are often the cause of many comprehension breakdowns (Scott & Balthazar, 2010; Zipoli, 2017).
Yet in order to improve our students’ ability to understand and use these types of sentences, we need to combine that with work on other, simpler types of sentences so they can understand how all of the pieces fit together.
That’s why today, I’m going to quiz you on the following:
- Simple sentences
- Compound sentences
- Complex sentences.
Syntax IQ Part 2: Types of sentences
Question #1: What is a simple sentence?
I’ll give you a hint. Remember the way we explained sentences in part 1? It’s pretty similar. It’s just that now, we need to be thinking ahead a little bit because we’re eventually going to be showing students how to combine simple sentences to make longer, more sophisticated sentence types.
If you don’t quite remember, here’s the answer:
Question #2: What is a compound sentence?
We’re not quite to the complex sentences yet, which are the “heavy hitter” skill when it comes to syntax and comprehension…but we’re getting close.
And there’s a subtle distinction between the two that’s going to help your students build a solid foundation for more difficult sentence types.
Here’s how we’d explain that here:
Question #3: What’s a complex sentence?
After all those foundational skills, we’re finally to the complex sentence. Do you know how to identify one, and can you explain it to your students?
Learn how in this video here:
That brings us to the end of the second syntax IQ quiz. How’d you do?
In the third and final quiz, I’ll test you on the different types of conjunctions.
If you want to be an overachiever and get a head start, you can download this free e-book where I give you lists of the different types of conjunctions.
I’ll also show you an evidence-based way to teach conjunctions to your students; plus I’ll give you some step-by-step guides for building compound and complex sentences.
You can download the Ultimate Guide to Sentence Structure e-book here.
References:
