UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY & EDUCATION

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

WEEK 1: WRITING
SIMPLE SENTENCES

Teacher: TRAN THI NHU TRANG, M.A.

Email: nhutrangspkt2016@gmail.com
 Lesson Outline
• COURSE INDUCTION
• + Introduction of the course, syllabus, and
textboook: requirements and rules of the course;
• + Guidance on learning strategies for writing;
• SIMPLE SENTENCES
• + Independent clauses
• + Subjects
• + Types of verbs
• + Sentence patterns
Write as many sentences as possible to describe this picture.
 What is a sentence?

• A sentence is a group of words

– expresses a complete thought.
– contains a subject and a verb.
– contains at least one main clause.
A sentence must have both a
subject and a predicate.
Ex: David Beckham is a football player.
 What is the Subject of a sentence?
=> the part of the sentence that tells whom or what
the sentence is about

➢ Complete subject
• all the words in the subject
• consists of the simple subject and any word or word
groups used to modify the simple subject.
➢ Simple subject
• the most important word in the complete subject
• may be a noun, a pronoun, or a word group that
functions as a noun.
Many hard-working police officers protect our city.
 SUBJECTS
➢ Singular subject
one person, place, or thing (Derek Walcott, St. Lucia,
he)

➢ Plural subject
more than one person, place, or thing (poems, people,
they).
Walcott’s poems have been collected in books.

➢ Compound subject
A plural subject that joins two subjects with and.
St. Lucia and Trinidad are Caribbean islands.
What he wanted and what he received were two
different things.
Task 1: In the paragraph below, underline the
subject of each sentence.

(1) Derek Walcott was born in 1930. (2) His ancestors

came from Africa, the Netherlands, and England. (3)
Walcott spent his early years on the Caribbean island of St.
Lucia. (4) Writing occupied much of his time. (5) His early
poems were published in Trinidad. (6) He later studied in
Jamaica and in New York. (7) Walcott eventually became
a respected poet. (8) He was a visiting lecturer at Harvard
in 1981. (9) In 1990, he published Omeros. (10) This long
poem about classical Greek heroes is set in the West
Indies. (11) In 1992, the poet won a Nobel Prize. (12)
Walcott later collab-orated with songwriter Paul Simon on
The Capeman, a Broadway musical.
 Task 2: Identify the subject in each sentence. Then, write
S above singular subjects and P above plural subjects.
1. Today, tourists can have fun on working farms.
2. In the past, visitors came to farms just to pick fruits and
vegetables.
3. Now, some farms have mazes and petting zoos.
4. One farm has a corn maze every year.
5. Sometimes the maze is in the shape of a train.
6. Visitors can also enjoy giant hay-chute slides, pedal go-carts,
and hayrides.
7. Working farms start agritainment businesses to make money.
8. However, insurance companies and lawyers worry about the
dangers of agritainment.
9. Tourists have gotten animal bites, fallen from rides and
machinery, and gotten food poisoning.
10. Agritainment, like other businesses, has advantages and
disadvantages.
Compound predicates

➢ A simple sentence may have two or more

simple predicates: a compound predicate

The dealers counted and stacked the poker

chips.
He had searched all afternoon but had found
nothing.
He hit the ball, threw down his bat, and ran
toward first base.
 Simple predicates (Verbs)

➢ Action Verbs
• tell what the subject does, did, or
will do
Renee will drive to Tampa on Friday.
Amelia Earhart flew across the
Atlantic.
• show mental and emotional actions
Travis always worries about his job.
 Simple predicates (Verbs)
➢ Linking Verbs
• does not show action.
• connects the subject to a word or words that
describe or rename it -> tells what the subject is
(or what it was, will be, or seems to be)
A googolplex is an extremely large number.

• “be”; verbs to the senses (look, feel, and so

on)
Some students feel anxious about the future.
 Simple predicates (Verbs)
➢ Helping Verbs (auxiliary verbs)
• Many verbs consist of more than one word.
Minh must make a decision about his future.
o must make: complete verb
o make: main verb
o must: helping verb

❖ forms of be, have, and do as well as the words

must, will, can, could, may, might, should, and would.
Minh should have gone earlier.
Did Minh ask the right questions?
Minh will work hard.
Minh can really succeed.
 Prepositional Phrases

• A prepositional phrase consists of a

preposition (a word such as on, to, in, or with)
and its object (the noun or pronoun it
introduces).

The cost of the repairs was astronomical.

At the end of the novel, after an exciting chase,
the lovers flee to Mexico.
 Task 3: Expand each sentence below by
adding one or more prepositional phrases that
answer the question(s) in parentheses.
1. The man tripped. (What did the man trip over?)
2. Visitors arrived yesterday. (Where were the visitors
from?)
3. The candles flickered. (Where were the candles?)
4. Gus hid the candy bar. (Where did Gus hide the candy
bar?)
5. Last night I watched a YouTube video. (What was the
video about?)
6. Sid sat. (Where did he sit? With whom did he sit?)
7. The teacher spoke. (Who did the teacher speak to? What
did she speak about?)