Grading Papers

While I enjoy reading what my students have to say, I wish more of them had paid attention in the fourth grade about how to construct a sentence. I get depressed when student after student puts together a collection of words that has no subject or predicate, and then, after correction, does it again. I struggle with how to convey, to a classroom of 20 post-high-school kids, what constitutes a sentence and how to properly construct one. The terms "noun," "subject," "predicate," "verb," and "dependent clause" simply have no meaning to this group of people; that fact makes instruction extremely difficult. Why should a writer not begin a sentence with "and?" Because what comes out is likely a dependent clause lacking either a subject or a verb. I struggle with that explanation as I look out to the sea of faces and see blank or puzzled looks. I will keep trying.