In an ideal world, sentences in a college-level essay should feature a variety of sentence types. In reality, most papers stick to simple and compound sentences, two of the types a handout on sentence patterns discusses. Part of a larger series to improve writing skills, the reference sheet provides examples and descriptions of complex and compound-complex sentences, as well as information on more basic elements, such as independent and dependent clauses.

Concepts

constructing sentences, sentence patterns, simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, compound-complex sentences

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Take a simple sentence and, as a class, expand it to demonstrate the other sentence types
• Using a recently written paper, have learners highlight each sentence type using a different color to see which type they use most

Classroom Considerations

• Although designed for college level, aligns with middle school level Common Core State Standards

Pros

• Uses silly sentences, such as "Mr. Potato Head eats monkeys," to make material more interesting
• Contains headers and bold text to make skimming and scanning easier
  

Cons

• Focuses on a lower-level sentence construction

Common Core

L.7.1.b