Level 4 Verbals -- The KISS Approach

Dr. Ed Vavra's KISS Approach to Sentence Structure

Exercises for Level Four

You should be comfortable identifying clauses (Level Three),
before you begin Level Four.

Directions:

First, study the instructional material on verbals. Then the directions are always the same:

Note: You will find it much easier if you work your way through the text, one sentence at a time. Do your best with a sentence, then forget it and go on to the next.

1. Select any exercise.
2. Place parentheses ( ) around every prepositional phrase. Draw a curved line from each opening paren to the word that the phrase modifies.
3. Underline finite verbs twice, their subjects once. Label complements (PA, PN, IO, DO).
4. Place brackets [ ] around any subordinate clauses. If a subordinate clause functions as an adjective or adverb, draw an arrow from the opening bracket to the word the clause modifies. If a subordinate clause functions as a noun, label its function (S, PN, DO, OP) above the opening bracket.
5. Place a dark vertical line after the last word in each main clause.
6. Draw a box around every gerundive and draw a line to the word it modifies.
7. Draw a box around every gerund and label its function (SU, OP, DO, IO etc.)
8. Draw an oval around every infinitive. If it functions as an adjective or adverb, draw a line from the oval to the word it modifies. If it functions as a noun, label its function.

Once you have completed an exercise, go back to the Main Menu of Exercises to get the answer key. (Yes, I have intentionally made it difficult to get to them.) Keep doing these exercises until you feel that you have a basic mastery of verbals. Then you can move on to Level Five.

Begin with some jokes?
(Who says grammar exercises must be boring?)

Joke # 1	Joke # 2	Joke # 3
Joke # 4	Joke # 5	Joke # 6
Joke # 7	Joke # 8	Joke # 9

Try a few of Aesop's Fables?

Fable # 1	Fable # 2	Fable # 3
Fable # 4	Fable # 5	Fable # 6

Opening Paragraphs of Famous Novels

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Henry James' Daisy Miller

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer

This border is a reproduction of part of

EL GRECO's
(1541-1614)
The Burial of Count Orgaz
1585, Oil on canvas,
Santo Tomé, Toledo

Adapted from Web Gallery of Art http://sunserv.kfki.hu/~arthp/index_o.html

Click here for the directory of my backgrounds based on art.
[for educational use only]