GREETINGS/CONTENTS
Greetings from Southern Oregon! Here’s hoping your 2012 is a great year.
NEWS what’s happening
JUST FOR FUN witty sayings
SENTENCE COMBINING facts and skills
RECENT READS a few from me
MISCELLANY as it says
NEWS
We have recently made some milestones here. Our first book, Jensen’s Grammar Part 1, now the first third of Jensen’s Grammar, was published in late January 20 years ago. The second milestone is that I moved into my seventh decade on the third of January this year. I received a Kindle Fire for my birthday courtesy of my dear wife, so I will likely be doing some electronic reading in the future.
Students and moms continue to phone or email me with questions about procedure and answers. I welcome the interaction. The more specific the question, the more likely my answer will be on target.
You can still email me at
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to get a set of major vocabulary tests for Jensen’s Vocabulary. I am the only source for these tests. They are free, but you will have to print them off. Each set includes the test and the answers.
JUST FOR FUN
Witty sayings continue to cross my email. Here are a few for you to enjoy.
Love is grand!! Divorce is a hundred grand.
I am in shape. Round is a shape.
Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels good.
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
An optimist thinks this is the best possible world. A pessimist fears this is true.
There will always be death and taxes; however, death doesn’t get worse every year.
In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.
I am not over weight; I am a nutritional overachiever.
It’s frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever.
Age doesn’t always bring wisdom. Sometimes it comes alone.
Life not only begins at forty, it also begins to show.
SENTENCE COMBINING
The study of grammar is about the structure and arrangement of words in various constructions, generally speaking, phrases and sentences. The phraseology of our speech and writing should convey our thoughts to others in some intelligible fashion. Thus, the skill of putting ideas in front of others is most helpful to master. The focus in this brief piece will be about combining sentences.
As with any process, there are two things to keep in mind. First, there are facts and rules; these are givens and control the process that uses them. Second is the process of applying the rules and facts to a new situation. This is the skill portion. These two are closely related for obvious reasons. The facts and rules by themselves are nice, but they need to be put to use, which is where the skill comes in. In Jensen’s Grammar, students are required to both know the rules and apply them.
What are the facts and rules that apply when combining sentences? The answer depends on what is required in the ultimate combination. Let’s take a look at two sentences and see how this works out.
Joe and Nancy went to town.
Joe and Nancy bought some eggs.
It is possible to combine these two sentences in a number of ways, so let’s apply some further direction. Suppose we are told to end up with a sentence that is thirteen words long, and we are told to use the word and. Those instructions give us much greater direction. Using and means we have to apply a certain punctuation rule. Also we will have to count the words in the finished sentence.
Joe and Nancy went to town, and Joe and Nancy bought some eggs.
OK, there are thirteen words; we used and to hook the two sentences together, and we applied the proper punctuation rule. The only alternative combination that would fit would be to reverse the order of the sentences, but that order makes less sense, so it’s not a very good choice. Now let’s suppose the directions say to use and but only have eleven words in the final combination. We will have to do some substituting of words to make this work.
Joe & Nancy went to town, and they bought some eggs.
Keeping the same order of the sentences, we have the above result. We used and as the connector, used the proper punctuation rule, substituted for Joe and Nancy with the proper pronoun, and ended up with the proper amount of words. Let’s try the same directions again using and but this time only end up with ten words in the finished combination.
Joe and Nancy went to town and bought some eggs.
We still kept the same order of idea and used and as the connector, but this time a new punctuation rule came in to play. The key here is to recognize which facts and rules apply in the process. In this case instead of having two complete sentences connected with and, we end up with two verb phrases, and that changes what punctuation rule applies. We aren’t done yet. There are all sorts of other possibilities that come to mind. Let’s start by using a different type of connector. Instead of a coordinating conjunction, suppose the directions tell us to use a relative this time, in particular, the relative who. This necessitates remembering the rules about making a relative clause, such as placement, punctuation, and order of the relative clause itself. Applying those rules to the two sentences, we come up with two possibilities.
Joe & Nancy, who bought some eggs, went to town.
Joe & Nancy, who went to town, bought some eggs.
Either sentence is correct since the directions did not tell us which sentence was to be the primary sentence that would hold the secondary idea. Note that the first sentence emphasizes going to town while the second one focuses on buying eggs. The same punctuation rule having to do with relative clauses is applied in both cases. Here are some new directions. Use another type of connector, a subordinator, in this case the word when. Place it between the two sentences; the end result should be eleven words. If we just stuck when between the two sentences, we would have thirteen words. Thus, we will have to substitute, but we did that earlier. They nicely takes the place of Joe and Nancy.
Joe and Nancy bought some eggs when they went to town.
Joe and Nancy went to town when they bought some eggs.
Either sentence is correct since the directions did not tell us which idea or sentence was to be primary. Note there is no internal punctuation in our answers; that’s because a punctuation rule tells us there is not to be any punctuation when a subordinator is in the middle of two sentences. Most books don’t teach where not to put punctuation, but this rule, I sub I, is a good one to know. The directions could have told us to put when at the very front of the entire combination. That changes the punctuation.
When Joe and Nancy went to town, they bought some eggs.
When Joe and Nancy bought some eggs, they went to town.
There are other possibilities when putting the ideas of one sentence into another. Ideas from one sentence might be transferred as adjectives, prepositional phrases, appositives, and participles, gerunds, infinitives and their phrases. Those, along with the relatives, use embedding skills. The three conjunctives, two of which we used, require addition skills. Any and all sentences may be combined by addition, but only certain sentences will contain the various embedded constructions. Here’s a for instance.
Joe and Nancy live in Oregon.
Joe and Nancy are my relatives.
If I take the proper words from the second sentence, I can make an appositive.
Joe and Nancy, my relatives, live in Oregon.
I can extract a single word modifier from one sentence and put it in the other.
Joe and Nancy are my Oregon relatives.
And so it goes. Lots of combinations are possible. English is not rocket science, but there are rules to follow. Knowing the rules is necessary; it is the precursor to knowing how to apply the rules by recognizing the situation, and that is where the skill takes place. Jensen’s Grammar takes the student through what I have covered above and much more. Students who go through the book are able to combine sentences in all sorts of ways, and that skill enhances their ability to communicate precisely, clearly, and understandably.
RECENT READS
I read two more books for boys since Christmas was coming, and I had my grandson in mind. Outcasts is the first in a new series by John Flanagan; he is an Australian and has a previous series that has sold quite well. Outcasts was fast paced, had a decent plot structure, and the characterization was acceptable. One negative was that a lie was told by the good guy in order to avoid a difficulty; that was not a good role model. The other book was Taken by Brock Eastman. It is his first book, and the writing is uneven. The story works but jumps back and forth between two parts of the family which has become separated.
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is by Bill Bryson. It is autobiographical about his early years growing up in Des Moines, Iowa. He is rather irreverent, so that spoiled some of it for me. I lived in Des Moines at the end of the 1950’s, so the references to stores and parks were somewhat familiar; that made parts of it more interesting.
Gavin Menzies wrote The Lost Empire of Atlantis. I had read one of his previous books, 1421, so I was attracted to this new book. He makes a pretty good case for the Minoans and their base at the Greek island of Santorini for being the fabled Atlantis. Menzies brings in lots of historical information and shows how the Minoans were quite the traders of their day with routes up to England and over to America where they mined copper from an area around Lake Superior. It is a fascinating read.
I dipped into two Louis L’Amour novels; they were each an evening’s read, Dark Canyon and Last Stand at Papago Wells. I had read them some years back but remembered only portions of them. They were typical L’Amour: lots of action, flat characters, and a satisfactory resolution at the end with the bad guys getting their just desserts.
Using the DVD series by the same name, I read John Piper’s Gravity and Gladness. It is about worship and the combination of reverence with joy in worship. Piper raises a number of questions and doesn’t answer them all. It is a provocative series; I think the book is more balanced than the DVD presentations, but the series is good, and I recommend both the DVD’s and the book.
D. A. Carson wrote The God Who is There. It is a brief tour of the Bible in which Carson explains who God is by moving from Genesis, “The God Who Made Everything,” to Revelation, “The God Who Triumphs.” He picks particular passages and stories and explains them in a manner that ties all of Scripture together. A CD is available in MP3 format that gives his lectures that parallel the book. Mr. Carson is very readable, and he has good things to say. He handles the language well.
Providentially I saw a three for the price of two sale in a local department store, so I grabbed two books by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., a favorite author of mine. Viewpoints Critical is a compilation of short stories, some of which date back almost 40 years. As with any group of short stories, some were better than others, but Modesitt’s forte is the novel. Imager’s Intrigue is number three in the Imager Portfolio, and I enjoyed it. Rhennthyl, the main character, survives a few too many close calls even though he has some extraordinary powers, but it is a good story – no sex, no bad language, plenty of intrigue, and nicely paced.
Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard, has lately been on the New York Times best-seller list. It is about James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States. All I remembered about Garfield was that he was a dark horse candidate and that he was assassinated soon after he took office. The book covers his youth and upbringing and his relationship with his wife. His doctors killed him. The book is well-written and gives a personal impression of the man. I recommend it as a look at a former president and at an age when the United States was quite different from what it is today.
Francis Bok writes about his own experience in Sudan in Escape From Slavery. The early part of the book is about his early family life, his capture and time as a slave, his escape and how he managed finally to get to Egypt and then to America. Francis mentions God and his faith as what kept him going at times. The latter part of the book is about his experiences here. This is about recent history; slavery in Sudan continues to exist, and Francis is at work to bring that fact to a level of national consciousness.
Honor Harrington has to be one of my favorite fictional characters. This past quarter I read #11 and #12 in the series. David Weber has crafted a whole universe which others are contributing to in the Honorverse books. At All Costs more or less brings the war with the Peeps to an end, but new villains appear in Mission of Honor. Is seems that Manticore and the People’s Republic have a common enemy who has manipulated them into wars with each other. A pre-emptive strike with a new technology sets Manticore’s production facilities back a number of years along with the loss of much of their fleet. Honor is not as central in the this last book, but she is still active and a force to contend with. This space opera at its best. The next book is forthcoming, and I hope to read it when it becomes available.
Surviving Hell is by Leo Thorsness, a Vietnam veteran who survived six years in the Hanoi Hilton as a POW. Faith, family, friends, and fun kept him going. I could not put this book down. It had some laugh out loud moments as well as some teary-eyed ones. The writing is simple and from the heart. The stories are true and exemplify what is good about America. I am both proud and glad to be an American. Thorsness writes a very moving book that young folks should read. He is a true hero and holds the Medal of Honor for what he did prior to capture. Read this book; you won’t be disappointed.
MISCELLANY
1. Excerpts of material from this newsletter may be freely used so long as proper credit is given as to the source. Feel free to copy it and pass it along.
2. This newsletter is posted quarterly on the website, and it is emailed free to those who wish to subscribe.
3. Your support of my materials over the years has allowed me to continue as a teacher far longer than I ever thought. It is a blessing to hear from you, especially those great success stories about how well a student did on some standardized test or winning an essay contest and so forth. Thanks to all who continue to purchase, use, and recommend our books. Your comments and questions are always welcome.
4. The next issue of Smithy Notes is scheduled for distribution in the spring, Lord willing.
IN HIS HANDS,
Frode Jensen
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