Find the Verb of a Sentence

When grading the essays on the 2nd mock exam, I found quite a few students still had problems with English sentences. The most common mistake is either two verbs in a simple sentence or no verb at all. The following is a website I just came across where the idea of the imporant parts of a sentence is explicitly explained.

http://johnsesl.com/templates/writing/sentenceS.php

Sentence Structure

This tutorial provided by John's ESL Community
http://www.johnsesl.com

Sentence Structure

The Sentence: A definition What is a sentence? A sentence is "a group of words that contains a subject, a verb, expresses a complete thought and makes sense."1 In English, as in other languages, there are four main types of sentences. The four types are declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative. Sentences can be simple - containing only one subject and one verb, complex - containing two or more subjects and verbs with a subordinating conjunction on either clause, compound - containing two or more subjects and verbs joined by a coordinating conjunction or a semicolon. Simple Sentence Jim went home. Complex Sentence Although Jim went home, he will come again tomorrow. Compound Sentence Jim went home, but he will come again tomorrow. The key to identifying sentences is the ability to identify the parts of a sentence. The first part of a sentence that you should be able to recognize is the verb. The verb is the most important part of a sentence, because it tells what is happening or what it is that exists. NOTE: If no verb exists, no sentence exists. My comments: An exercise I always suggest my students do is locate the verb of a sentence. My instruction is like this: "Now find the period. Find it? OK, next, find the verb." Unless there is a conjunction, there is always only ONE verb. Once the verb is found, the students can easily identify the subject; that is, the topic of the sentence, and the modifier(s), if there is any. Can you find the verb of the following sentence? The coveted trophy went to the person considered to be the best singer. If you can locate the verb "went," then you know "coveted" and "considered" are both past participles used to modify the nouns "trophy" and "person" respectively. Finding the Verb     To find the verb in a sentence, ask which word shows action: run jump play think or state of being. is were have became   Next, decide whether the word can be changed to show past, present, or future time. He is here. He was here. He will be here. He runs home. He ran home. He will run home.   A word that does not show time is not the main verb of the sentence. Look at the following sentence. Which word is the main verb of the sentence? The barking dog jumped on the woman. Try changing the sentence to future tense. Which word would you change? The word that changes to future tense is the main verb. Could this be a sentence?   The will bark dog jumped on the woman. It isn't a sentence because "barking" is not the verb of the sentence. The word "barking" in the original sentence is functioning as an adjective and is modifying the noun "dog." The verb in the original sentence is "jumped." The tense of the verb "jumped" can be changed to future tense. My comments: This is a good strategy. The barking dog will jump on the woman. Finding the subject Once you find the verb, the next step is to locate the subject. This should be relatively easy once you know what the verb is. The subject is the noun (person or thing) doing the action of the verb or being the rest of the sentence. The guests enjoyed the party. [Did the guests enjoy or did the party enjoy? The guest enjoyed so "guests" is the subject.] I ate breakfast at the hotel this morning. [Did my breakfast eat? NO. Did this morning eat? NO. I ate, so I is the subject.] My comments: The folllowing is a sentence from the Passage Completion section of a UEE practice test. Students are asked to find the correct word from a list of ten to fill in the blank. Some found it hard and came to ask me. "He explains how _______ about the food people eat is making them fatter and less healthy." At first sight, the students thought the missing word should be an adjective or an adverb since the word "how" is often followed by either of the two. However, employing the subject-verb rule, they would have known the verb "is making" needs a subject and therefore the missing word is actually a noun. The sentence can be analyzed this way: "He explains / how / ______ about the food / people eat / is making them fatter and less healthy. In the sentence, "how" is used to modify the verb "is making." P.S. The missing word is "ignorance." . 1Most textbooks define a sentence as "a group of words that contains a subject, a verb and expresses a complete thought." I have added "must make sense" because I have read many sentences that meet the original criteria but do not make sense.