Question

lesson
28
edit sentences:
sentence fragments
a sentence fragment is a group of words that is punctuated like a sentence but is not
complete. one kind of sentence fragment is missing a subject or a verb.
for example: makes me wonder. (missing subject)
the house across the street. (missing verb)
to fix this type of sentence fragment, add the missing subject or verb.
another type of sentence fragment is an infinitive phrase fragment.
for example: to find out what happened.
this type of sentence fragment begins with the word to and the base form of a verb
(e.g., watch, listen, travel). infinitive phrase fragments do not have main clauses, so
they are not complete sentences.
an infinitive phrase can be fixed by adding a subject and verb to create an
independent clause, or by attaching the infinitive phrase to an independent clause.
for example: i want to find out what happened.
jeremy called his parents to find out what happened.
note that in speech or some creative forms of writing, sentence fragments are used.
in poetry, dialogue, and advertising, sentence fragments can be used to convey an
informal, natural tone.
a. underline the sentence fragments in the passage below.
after school, jenna and i exercised on the football field. running laps, sprinting, and doing
jumping jacks. we took turns timing each other’s sprints and tracking each other’s distances.
to find out our progress and see if we could beat our personal records. the track meet is only
a week away. a lot of work to do!
b. on the lines below, correct the sentence fragments you found in exercise a. rewrite
the paragraph with the corrected sentence fragments.

48 build sentences
nel

Explanation:

For part A, we identify sentence fragments by checking if they lack a subject, verb, or are an incomplete phrase.

• "Running laps, sprinting, and doing jumping jacks." (lacks a main clause connection, is a phrase fragment)
• "To find out our progress and see if we could beat our personal records." (infinitive phrase fragment, no main clause)
• "A lot of work to do!" (missing verb, fragment)

For part B, we correct them by attaching to independent clauses or adding necessary elements:

• "After school, Jenna and I exercised on the football field, running laps, sprinting, and doing jumping jacks." (attach the phrase to the independent clause)
• "We took turns timing each other’s sprints and tracking each other’s distances to find out our progress and see if we could beat our personal records." (attach infinitive phrase to the independent clause)
• "The track meet is only a week away. There is a lot of work to do!" (add subject and verb to the fragment)

Then rewrite the paragraph with these corrections:

After school, Jenna and I exercised on the football field, running laps, sprinting, and doing jumping jacks. We took turns timing each other’s sprints and tracking each other’s distances to find out our progress and see if we could beat our personal records. The track meet is only a week away. There is a lot of work to do!

Answer:

Part A (Underlined Fragments):

• Running laps, sprinting, and doing jumping jacks.
• To find out our progress and see if we could beat our personal records.
• A lot of work to do!

Part B (Corrected Paragraph):

After school, Jenna and I exercised on the football field, running laps, sprinting, and doing jumping jacks. We took turns timing each other’s sprints and tracking each other’s distances to find out our progress and see if we could beat our personal records. The track meet is only a week away. There is a lot of work to do!