Adding Sophisticated Grammatical Structures to the Grammar of Your Writing
One of our goals is to add sophisticated grammatical structures to the grammar of your writing. The question you might have now is this: What happens if I learn these structures? How does that help me?
Well, in this lesson, we are going to address that very question. We’ll look at the application of grammatical structures related to adverb clauses and we’ll begin to apply those structures to the first meaning we have in our writing.
A List of Sophisticated Structures Related to Adverb Clauses Thus Far.
Before we do that, let’s just list the sophisticated structures that we talked about already: 1)adverb clauses, 2) reduced adverb clauses, 3) reduced sentences, 4) move a transition and 5) adverb phrases.
Those are some of the sophisticated structures related to adverb clause.
Application to Your Writing.
The question is how do I get them in my writing? Well, you get them in your writing by recognizing two things: 1) When you see fanboys or transitions in your writing, you can add more sophisticated structures to your writing. 2) You need to know the vocabulary and meaning for all these structures in order to add them.
Meaning 1: Cause or reason
We are going to look at fanboys, transitions and adverb clauses and change them to even more sophisticated structures by looking at each meaning. Please note that what’s on the left side of the chart is not sophisticated but what’s on the right side of the chart is sophisticated grammatically. This chart is for cause or reason only. Please look over the chart. Notice that there are no transitions for the meaning of cause or reason.
CHART FOR CAUSE - see more complete chart in picture below.
fanboys transitions adv. clauses reducing adv.clauses adverb phrases
for x because 1.need same subjects because of/due to
since/as 2. to be or not to be
3.delete because
Note: For reducing 2 sentences, follow rules 1 and 2 and delete the period and add a comma.
Note: You can't move a transition because there is no transition.
Let’s look at each structure. In order to apply the structures, let’s do a quick reminder about each structure. You also need to know what context to apply them to. You need to know whether they are informal or formal.
Fanboys: For. Please know that this “for” goes between two sentences. There are other uses of for that we won’t be talking about here. We don’t use for much because it is for more formal structures. We can’t say “I am going to go to go to a baseball game for I like it.” It sound ridiculous because the sentence is informal but “for” is formal. You need a sentence that has formal content.
Adverb clauses: Adverb clauses can go before or after a sentence. When it goes before a sentence, it needs a comma and when it goes after a sentence, we don’t use commas. Because and since are informal. As and due to the fact that are formal.
Reducing: reducing adverb clauses or reducing two sentences. Please look at the chart and previous lessons for the grammar of these structures. Reducing is formal. Reducing adverb clauses and reducing two sentences are not done in spoken English unless the speech was written ahead of time. You can do it in writing most any time.
Adverb phrases: Because of and due to. Please look at previous lessons for the grammar of these structures. These structures are considered formal.
Application to Your Writing.
Application to sentences. Before we apply them to a paragraph, let’s look at some samples with just sentences.
Example 1: The U.S. government sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan for the U.S.government believed that troops were needed to combat terrorism.
Now how can we make this sentence more sophisticated?
Look for “for” or “because.” You have “for.” We could change it to an adverb clause just by erasing “for” and adding a more sophisticated word like “due to the fact that.” We don’t need a comma for the adverb clause because it is at the end of the sentence. That would be easy.
Adverb clause:The U.S. government sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan due to the fact that the U.S. government believed that troops were needed to combat terrorism.
Reducing the adverb clause: Could we reduce the clause? Yes, we could. We have the same subjects. What is the verb of the clause – to be or not to be? It is not to be. It is “believed.” We change it to the ing form of the verb and get “believing.” Now what’s rule 3? Do we keep it or delete it? We delete it.
So the answer is this: The U.S. government sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan for the U.S., believing that troops were needed to combat terrorism.
Please note: Now, why do we need a comma before the reduced clause? We have this lovely rule that says that if a reduction is at the end of a sentence and there is no word before it like while,when or because, we have to add a comma. Adding the comma helps the reader know that there is not something wrong with the verb and it is just reduced.
Reducing two sentences: We don’t have two sentences here so we can’t do it.
Adverb phrase: We can use because of because it has the same meaning. Look for the most sophisticated word in the clause. Here is the clause: because the U.S. government believed that troops were needed to combat terrorism. Most people would say “believed.” Now do you know the noun of believed? It is believing and belief. We don’t like the ing form because it is not considered formal. We would use belief.
We have this so far: because of….belief. Now what is our next rule? We need to know whether we have a person or organization. Yes, we do. The U.S. is referring to people here.
We can add a possessive noun like because of the government’s belief. What do we do next? We need to see what we have leftover. We have this information leftover: that troops were needed to combat terrorism
Because what is leftover has a verb in it, we usually need to add who, which or that but we already have that so we don’t need to add anything.
Our answer is “The U.S. government sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan because of the U.S. government’s belief that troops were needed to combat terrorism.
Let’s do a little more practice. Please change as instructed.
1.Students don’t perform well on tests for they lose sleep.
Change fanboys (for) to an adverb clause:
Change fanboys to a reduced adverb clause:
Reduce the first sentence:
Change fanboys to an adverb phrase (due to or because of):
2.Students sometimes don’t do well on tests for they have a lot of stress.
Change fanboys (for) to an adverb clause:
Change fanboys to a reduced adverb clause:
Reduce the first sentence:
Change fanboys to an adverb phrase (due to or because of):
In this lesson, we listed the sophisticated grammatical structures that we had already discussed, we looked at the structures for cause or reason and then we applied those structures to sample sentences.