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Vocabulary and Sentence Structure 1 of 29

Vocabulary Development

& Sentence Structure

© Steve Whitmore

May 2018


Causes of Mortality Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION:

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills us.


Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you will understand how to

further develop your vocabulary and vary the sentence

structures you use.


Some Facts about English Difficult to define the exact number of words in English,

but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) puts it at a bit

over 1 million. These words include the following:

• Standard language of literature and discourse

• Obsolete and archaic words

• Technical terms

• Slang and dialect

By number of speakers, English is the 2nd most

common spoken language in the world (Mandarin is

#1, Hindi/Hindustani is #3, and Spanish is #4).

These rankings are currently open to vigorous debate!


Some Facts about English

English has become the standard language of science,

flight, and diplomacy for several reasons:

• Influence of British Empire in 18th and 19th centuries

• American influence through TV, radio, and the

internet in the 20th and 21st centuries

English is fluid:

• Quickly adopts new technical and popular words

• Steals words (along with the accompanying

linguistic structures) from many other languages


Some Facts about English Main sources for English vocabulary:

• French – 28%

• Latin – 28%

• Old and Middle English – 25%

• Greek – 5%

• Unknown – 4%

• Proper names – 3%

• Everywhere else – 7%

Therefore, “English” is not actually English?

In other words, when you learn English, you learn several other languages as a “bonus.”


Some Facts about English

Average literate person in Victorian era had a working

vocabulary of about 25,000 words

Currently, a native English speaker with a university

education is able to understand about 20,000 words

(not including technical vocabulary)

Minimum of 10,000 is necessary to score high on

TOEFL

English is the most widely learned additional language

in the world


Expanding Your English Vocabulary Effective vocabulary expansion requires work in 2 key

areas: idioms and general vocabulary (mainly verbs)

You can expand your facility with idioms by attending

to spoken English and informal written English

• Watch news programs on TV (CBC, Knowledge

Network, PBS)

• Watch educational programs on TV (Nova, Nature,

@discovery.ca)

• Practice speaking in English at every opportunity

• Read newspapers, newsfeeds, and magazines;

NB. (National Post – grade 12, Vancouver Sun –

grade 10, Vancouver Province – grade 8)


Idioms are a Problem

That lecture was a real dog’s breakfast.

A good rule of thumb for paragraphs is that they

should not be longer than they are wide.

• Dog’s breakfast = mixed scraps of leftovers

• Rule of thumb = a rough approximation

Look them up in a dictionary of idioms

Ask what they mean (the idioms used most often by

individuals are related to generational differences)


Expanding General Vocabulary

Read novels that interest you:

• Slowest method, but most effective

• Requires spending time every week reading

• Use a dictionary when reading the books (Oxford

Advanced Learner's Dictionary is worth purchasing)

Try working on crosswords and tests found on the

internet (moderately effective)

30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary – least effective

(words that aren’t used tend not to transfer to memory)


Expanding General Vocabulary

Use a good thesaurus when writing (The Synonym

Finder):

• Biggest help with verbs and adverbs (many common

verbs in English originate in Old English and are too

general – e.g., make, do, find, etc.)

• Use a dictionary to help sort out connotations; under

the word copy in a thesaurus you will find these

possibilities:

– duplicate, reproduce, caricature, parody,

emulate, parrot, cheat, plagiarize, model,

replicate, forge, counterfeit, mirror, etc.


Varying Sentence Structure

Strings of sentences that are all the same in structure

(and length) become monotonous.

To avoid putting readers to sleep, try varying the

following:

• Sentence structure

• Sentence openers

• Sentence length


Simple Sentences

Simple sentences consist of one independent clause

and any number of modifying words or phrases:

1. She banged the garbage can lids together.

2. At the same time, he slammed the kitchen cabinet

doors.


Compound Sentences

Compound sentences consist of two or more

independent clauses joined by a coordinating

conjunction (and, but, or, for, nor, yet, so). They may

also have any number of modifying words and phrases:

1. He yanked the cookie sheets from the cabinet with

glee, and she rattled them enthusiastically.

2. She dropped the cookie sheets, but he picked them

up.


Complex Sentences

Complex sentences have one independent clause,

one or more dependent clauses and sometimes

modifying words or phrases:

1. After the neighbors began to complain, the couple

started both their motorcycles and roared off.

2. They went in search of an authentic air raid siren, a

prize that they considered the ultimate in noisiness.


Compound-Complex Sentences

Compound-complex sentences have two or more

independent clauses joined by a coordinating

conjunction and one or more dependent clauses:

1. When they were finally arrested for disturbing the

peace, the pair told the judge that they considered

noise-making a new art form, and the judge, banging

her gavel gleefully, said she’d always thought so

herself.


Sentence Fragments

Sentence fragments are sentences that are grammatically incomplete because they either lack subjects and finite verbs or are made parts of larger structures by relative pronouns (who, which, that) or subordinating conjunctions (because, if, when, etc.).

1. Banging her gavel gleefully. (She was banging her gavel gleefully.)

2. I could tell she was happy. Because she was banging her gavel gleefully. (I could tell she was happy because she was banging her gavel gleefully.)


Run-On Sentences Run-on sentences consist of two or more independent

clauses in a sentence which are not joined by a coordinating or subordinating conjunction, or by a semicolon (a comma splice consists of two or more independent clauses joined by a comma):

1. Three people celebrated the acquittal one of them was the judge. Three people celebrated the acquittal, and one of them was the judge. Or. Three people cele-brated the acquittal; one of them was the judge. Or. Although three people celebrated the acquittal, only one of them was a judge. Or. Three people celebrated the acquittal. One of them was the judge. But not. Three people celebrated the acquittal, one of them was the judge. (Comma splice)


Noun Sentence Openers

That creature was a fish.

Dust storms marched incessantly across the wilderness.

Jane Doe is not her real name.

Note: The following slides have been adapted from an

adaptation of The Immense Journey: An Imaginative

Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man by Loren

Eiseley, 1946. The intermediate source is unknown.


Pronoun Sentence Openers

He breathed the air for a few hours.

They were small things.

Some, like the giant redwoods, lingered on as relics;

many vanished entirely.

None of these insignificant creatures possessed any

remarkable talents.

Everyone watched the twisting plane.


Adverb Sentence Openers

Finally, in the ruthless selection of the swamp margin, or in

the scramble for food in the tidal flats, the land becomes

home.

Always it marks the appearance of patterns of instinct and

the end of thought.

Perhaps the old road through the marsh could tell us.

Then a small button-shaped object upon the rug caught my

eye.

Nevertheless, if one had been seen stripped of its feathers, it

would still have seemed a slightly uncanny and unsightly

lizard.

Today we know that the abyss is haunted.

However, the females eventually subjugated the males.


Prepositional Phrase Sentence Openers

At times, the slowly contracting circle of water left little windrows of minnows.

By day, the temperature in the world outside rose to a frightful intensity; at night the sun went down in smoking red.

For this reason, we tended to visualize all of our remote relatives as tree dwellers.

Before the rise of the tree rodents, the environment that they occupy had remained peculiarly open to exploitation.

In stagnant swamp waters, only a highly developed blood supply to the brain can prevent disaster.

On the oily surface of the pond, from time to time a snout thrust upward, took in air with a queer grunting inspiration, and swirled back to the bottom.

Of all the fishes, the mudskipper is perhaps the strangest.


Dependent Clause Sentence Openers

When the sun rose next morning, the pond was an empty

place of cracked mud.

As I tapped and chiseled there in the foundation of the

world, I had ample time to consider the cunning

manipulability of the human hand.

If it does not get oxygen, life is gone.

Because the struggle for life is incessant, the unceasing

process promotes endless slow changes.

Although the traditional theory of evolution is usually

framed in terms that imply conflict, modern evolutionary

theories point out that cooperation as well as conflict is

required for survival.


Coordinate Conjunction Openers

But in the mangrove swamps of the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back into the water.

And among those gasping, dying creatures, the Snout and his brethren survived.

Yet it was this poor specialization -- this bog-trapped failure -- whose descendants, in three great movements, were to dominate the earth.

Or consider its later wanderings.

Neither the birds nor the mammals, however, were quite what they seemed.


Verbal Sentence Openers

Groping there in the dark cave, I began to feel detached

from the earth and all living creatures.

Equipped with beaks instead of with teeth, they pecked

the seeds and gobbled the insects.

To explain the rise of man through the slow incremental

gains of natural selection, Darwin had to assume a long

struggle of man with man and tribe with tribe.

Struck by the thought, I went out next day and collected

several others.


Other Sentence Openers

Gray was the dawn. (Adjective)

That I enjoyed. (Object)

The things she accomplished, he envied. (Object)

There was nothing to hold the land in place. (Filler)

There are strange things still coming ashore. (Filler)

It is here that strange compromises are made. (Filler)

Discourse Analysis Exercises For four of the next five weeks, you will spend about half

the class completing team-based discourse analysis

exercises on the following topics:• May 28: Sentence and paragraph structure

• June 04: Punctuation, convention, and readability

• June 18: Stylistic flaws involving order and connection

• June 25: Stylistic flaws involving clarity and conciseness

Most materials will be supplied for the exercises.

It is helpful if one or two members of each team bring a

laptop (with a recent version of MS Word installed) to the

June 04 class in order to use the grammar checker.

Please ensure you attend these classes as absences

will reduce your participation grade.Vocabulary and Sentence Structure 27 of 29

ENSC 803 Teams


Haris [email protected] [email protected]

Arshvir Kaur [email protected] [email protected]

Alon [email protected] [email protected]

Ali [email protected] [email protected]

Shaganroop [email protected] [email protected]

Leya Lopez [email protected] [email protected]

Faisal [email protected] [email protected]

Aaditya Vasan [email protected] [email protected]

Ron [email protected] [email protected]

Elham [email protected] [email protected]

Jyoti [email protected] [email protected]

These are the teams for the discourse analysis exercises in ENSC 803.

You can communicate within each e-mail list, but note that I do not receive any emails sent to the lists nor can the lists communicate.

I also recommend that you get to know your teammates as you may find it useful to work with each other proof-reading final drafts or rehearsing presentations.

Conclusion


Reflections: How much time each week are you willing

to spend to improve your vocabulary?

Reading: Strategies 72-94; Sentence Structure

Handout.

Documents

© Steve Whitmore May 2018 - ensc.sfu.cawhitmore/courses/ensc803/materials/Vocabulary and... · Dependent Clause Sentence Openers ... (Adjective) That I enjoyed ... laptop (with a