Tips for Teaching Grammar

Known and New Information: How Subjects and Predicates Keep the Information Flowing

Many students have heard the grammatical "subject" defined as what the sentence is about and the "predicate" referred to as the verb together with the objects and complements. But those dry definitions take on more meaning when you point out that most sentences can be divided between known information, information the reader is already familiar with from previous sentences, and new information, the comment that the writer or speaker is making about the subject in this sentence. Usually, the known information can be found in and near the sentence subject. This is most clearly so when the subject is a pronoun, since the pronoun refers to a noun phrase that has already been read. Known information may also appear in the modifiers or transitional phrasing toward the front of the sentence. The new information emerges from part or all of the predicate. Often the most important and detailed new information appears towards the sentence's conclusion. The sentences in this paragraph are examples of this pattern.

Take students to a paragraph in one of their books and show them the progression from known to new information in the sentences. Explain to them that this orderly progression is one reason the paragraph is coherent instead of being mixed up. Then ask them to look over a paragraph that they have written and make some appropriate revisions. They appreciate learning how to connect the way sentences are built with a way to make their writing flow more easily.

--Brock Haussamen

Raritan Valley Community College, New Jersey