Question

the following passage is the first draft of a student essay. it may contain errors.

the first priority

(1) the excitement of a winning touchdown, the crunch of a hard tackle, the state championship trophy displayed at school. (2) the football team has provided good memories and entertainment for walker high school. (3) i remember one game where the team rallied to score 3 touchdowns in the last 12 minutes to win. (4) however, the school board needs to be reminded that memories and entertainment are not the most important things a school should provide. (5) the school board has proposed a plan to spend $20 million to build a new state of the art football stadium. (6) the school board should reconsider its plan and use that large amount of money on something more important than sports-academics.
(7) though sports are fun and bring positive recognition to the school, the school board needs to remember that schools were created to educate young people. (8) our school has a 33 percent dropout rate. (9) our school also has low...

17
which sentence from the passage is a sentence fragment?
a. sentence 1
b. sentence 7
c. sentence 16
d. sentence 12

Explanation:

Define a complete sentence

Using the Sentence Structure knowledge point
A complete sentence must contain at least one independent clause, which requires a subject and a conjugated verb, and must express a complete thought.

Analyze sentence 1

Sentence (1) reads: "The excitement of a winning touchdown, the crunch of a hard tackle, the state championship trophy displayed at school."
This group of words consists of a list of noun phrases ("The excitement...", "the crunch...", "the state championship trophy...") but lacks a main conjugated verb (predicate) to show what these subjects are doing or experiencing. Therefore, it does not express a complete thought and is a sentence fragment.

Analyze sentence 7

Sentence (7) reads: "Though sports are fun and bring positive recognition to the school, the school board needs to remember that schools were created to educate young people."
This sentence contains a dependent clause ("Though sports are fun...") followed by a main independent clause ("the school board needs to remember...") with a subject ("the school board") and a verb ("needs"). It is a complete, grammatically correct complex sentence.

Compare options and conclude

Since sentence 1 lacks a main verb and does not form a complete independent clause, it is a sentence fragment. This matches option A.

Answer:

• A. sentence 1 (Correct answer)
• B. sentence 7
• C. sentence 16
• D. sentence 12