Fundamentals


Many of us have misconceptions about English that prevent us from achieving greater success in the SAT / ACT, so the first thing to do is to eliminate these misconceptions. 

Study the fundamentals below FIRST, and RESET your knowledge of the English language.



Fundamental 1


 

Every sentence has a subject and a verb.



A sentence MUST have at least 2 words, but they cannot be any two words. A sentence must always have a Subject (the main character of a sentence) and a Verb. 


In one sentence, there can be 1 subject or 20 subjects; the number doesn't matter.



What matters is this one simple rule: a SUBJECT is, in essence, always a NOUN



Fundamental 2



a subject (noun) is not limited to one word.


A noun is a person, place, object, or anything that has a "NAME". However, it can be more than one word.






Fundamental 3



Anything that is not a sentence is a MODIFIER.

Fundamentally, everything we write is either a sentence or a modifier (i.e., incomplete sentence). Forget all the fancy terms (e.g., dependent clause or participle phrase). Simplify everything. A modifier adds more information and detail to the sentence, and there are two basic types we need to know: Adjective and Adverb.


Adjectives give more information about nouns, whereas Adverbs give more information about everything else, including the verb, sentence, and other modifiers. (I will be uploading basic parts of speech such as noun, verb, adverb, and adjective very soon.)






Fundamental 4



MODIFIERS (adjective and adverb) can also be more than one word.


In fact, they come in various forms and lengths. Below are some examples (do not worry about the terminologies I’ve used below).








Fundamental 5


The same word can have a different function in a sentence.







Fundamental 6



DO NOT ALWAYS ERASE the information between two commas.


Understand that in one sentence, there can be many different comma usages.



It is true that oftentimes, the idea between two commas is a non-essential modifier.






However, we have to understand that the information between two commas is NOT ALWAYS non-essential (removable).


Do not automatically assume. Read the sentence and check how commas are used.





There are two commas here because one is used to separate the transition “yesterday” from the main sentence, while the other is used to separate the sentence and the modifier beginning with “even though.”

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