Unit 1: Language Skills
Unit 1 introduces you to sentence agreement and tense consistency. Both of these concepts relate to the correct use of verbs to improve clarity of expression. In English, it is important that subjects match their verbs in every sentence. It is also important that the time of verbs, referred to as the verb's tense, stays consistent in a sentence or paragraph. For example, readers would be confused if a sentence mentioned one bird "walked" but later said "birds" or if that same bird "walked" while also "is walking". Clear writing also relies on pronouns correctly referring to their noun antecedents. In this unit, you'll learn how to match subjects with their verbs and pronouns to their nouns and use verb tense consistently in your sentences or paragraphs to help the reader follow along easily. Finally, you'll practice recognizing subject-verb, pronoun-antecedent agreement, and tense consistency errors in order to correct them.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 5 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- explain subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreement rules; and
- recognize incorrect shifts in verb tense and sentence agreement errors for correction.
1.1: Sentence Agreement – Number, Person, and Case
We start Unit 1 with a review of three grammatical features. Sometimes, making subjects and their verbs or nouns and their antecedents agree in English can seem difficult, so this review will provide a basic understanding of how this agreement happens. These materials include information about grammar features to keep in mind for subject-verb agreement. After you read the explanations and watch the videos to learn about verbs, you will have a chance to test your understanding by completing practice activities.
Let's start by first reviewing the three grammatical features that affect the correct match between parts of sentences. Next, we will learn about specific subject-verb agreement rules in more detail to understand how to correctly match them in sentences.
Now that we have reviewed grammatical number, person, and case, let's look at subject-verb agreement in more detail to see how they can always be matched in our sentences.
After reviewing subject-verb agreement rules, let's take a look at pronoun-antecedent agreement in more detail to see how they can always be matched in our sentences.
1.2: Sentence Agreement – Let's Practice
Now that we know how to create agreement in our sentences in English, let's put our knowledge into practice.
These activities give you the opportunity to find out how well you understand how to ensure agreement between subjects and their predicates, as well as pronouns and their antecedents. If you have a difficult time forming and using verbs in the present, you may review and then try these practice activities again.
1.3: Sentence Agreement – Let's Apply
Now that you know about sentence agreement, let's see if we can easily identify those features in a text.
For this discussion, you will choose a couple of sentences from the Present Tense Discussion in Unit 1 of the ESL002 course and practice identifying any agreement used in that sentence.
1.4: Tense Consistency
In this part of Unit 1, we look at how we use verb tense to maintain sentence agreement. Using a consistent verb tense means using the same tense for verbs in a sentence or paragraph. When writing or editing, be sure to keep using the same tense and not change it unless you have a strong reason to do so. These materials include information about maintaining verb consistency when writing sentences and paragraphs. After you read the explanations and watch the videos to learn about tense consistency, you will have a chance to test your understanding by completing practice activities.
Let's start by first reviewing the role verbs playing sentences. Next, we will look at how maintaining verb tense improves sentence clarity.
After reviewing the role of main, or lexical, verbs in sentences and understanding the importance of tense consistency, let's look at improving sentence clarity by avoiding unnecessary tense shifts in our sentences.
1.5: Tense Consistency – Let's Practice
Now that we know how to avoid unnecessary tense shifts when writing, let's put our knowledge into practice.
These activities give you the opportunity to find out how well you can maintain tense consistency in sentences and paragraphs. If you have a difficult time identifying and correcting unnecessary tense shifts, you may review and then try these practice activities again.
1.6: Tense Consistency – Let's Apply
Now that we know how to avoid unnecessary tense shifts when writing, let's put our knowledge into practice.
For this discussion, tell a short family story or something that happened to you. As you write and proofread, make sure all your verbs are correct, and the tenses are consistent.
1.7: Putting It All Together
You have learned about important sentence agreement guidelines to write clear sentences in English. This is a lot to take in, for sure! This section will help you review what you learned in Unit 1.
Watch these videos and complete the practice activities to review what you learned about sentence agreement.
Unit 1 Assessment
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.