Tips for Teaching Grammar

Sentence Fragments: Testing for Sentence Completeness Using a Frame

If students are not sure whether a group of words is a complete sentence or not, they can put a phrase such as the following in front of it: "They refused to believe the idea that."

If the resulting sentence makes sense, the group of words is a complete sentence. Otherwise, it's a fragment. Every time.

1. Whatever you could do to help my sister.

*They refused to believe the idea that whatever you could do to help my sister.

2. This is what you could do to help my sister.

They refused to believe that idea that this is what you could do to help my sister.

* means that a native English speaker would not say this under normal conditions.

Adopted by Brock Haussamen from Rei Noguchi's Grammar and the Teaching of Writing, NCTE, 1991. Used with the permission of the author.